Indispensable: How to Become the Company That Your Customers Can't Live Without

Chapter 17. The Customer Decides

Stories from the Front Lines

My only direct experience in retail was in high school, when I worked in a men's clothing store during the holidays. Other than that, I've always been a business-to-business (B2B) guy. My customers tend to be big corporations. What I know is true in my B2B arena, however, is that retail consumer behavior moves up the food chain. That corporate or industrial buyer that you deal with is also a consumer. Once she has an experience on the retail level that delights her, she's going to expect the same thing from you. Or at least your version of it. Claiming that it's not fair to expect the same kind of service from you as she expects from her corner market won't cut you any slack. She won't care.

What follows are stories from the front lines. All of these stories are about street smarts. The street is where buying behavior trends are born. They then travel from retail up the food chain to influence the buying factors in corporate purchasing. Once that industrial purchasing agent buys a book on Barnes & Noble.com, or has an extraordinary experience in a local steakhouse, it influences her buying behavior back at work.

These are testimonies from people, in their own words, about businesses that they find indispensable. Here's the law of the marketplace: How well we think we're doing doesn't matter. It only matters how well the customer thinks we're doing. What we're after here are lessons that will get us a win with the customer. ...