It's the Customer, Stupid!: 34 Wake-up Calls to Help You Stay Client-Focused

Chapter 17. Find Out What the Customers Need and Give It to Them

Customers dictate winners and losers.

There is wide variety of reasons that customers crown you king or queen of their domain. From the vendor's standpoint, you need to quickly identify those reasons and go "Minnesota Fats" as quickly as possible. Minnesota Fats was a famous pool shark who never broke the rack without knowing where all of his next shots would be. "Fats" could see what did not exist just yet: his last shot for the game win.

While most of us in the business world don't have to possess that kind of acumen, there is one simple thing we can do: Find out what the customers want, and give it to them. Unfortunately, most companies simply want to dump what they have on their shelves rather than asking customers about their needs before even building the widget.

I spoke to a group of colleges and universities that are part of a consortium that develops and shares software to help them navigate through the maze of new problems they now face. These issues range from HIPAA regulations, to processing credit and debit cards, to taking on the role of student loan administrators. New requirements fall to them daily, and new headaches accompany those obligations.

The biggest challenges that all universities face are the bulging enrollments that are impregnated by record unemployment and layoffs in the corporate world. People are using this downtime to reload their guns and acquire skills that will make them more marketable ...