One important factor in successfully identifying customer needs is keeping your eyes on where your industry is moving, which brings us to the next point.
Emerging Trends: Every industry has internal and external forces that are driving change. Regardless of what business you are in, movement is happening and to be a catalyst of innovation for your custom- ers you need to be close to those changes.
To do this you need to constantly ask yourself the following questions:
- What are the biggest changes in our business in the past five years, one year, six months?
- What do these changes tell me about what trends are coming up next?
- Are the trends cyclical or are they linear?*
- How will these changes affect our clients and what can our product or services do to allow these changes to be a positive force for change within their businesses?
*Think of linear change as a trend that is going to continue to change with no foreseeable reversal (e.g., the price of hard disk storage), whereas a cyclical change or trend is something that may have an impact on business but could and likely will reverse at some point (e.g., real estate or fashion).
Application: Once you have helped your client determine their need, one of the areas that businesses struggle the most is identifying how the solution can be applied to their business.
To “theoretically” inspire someone is one thing, but to help them envision and apply it to their operation is another story. Many businesses do a terrific job of selling the customer on the need, but they fall flat on their face in the application phase.
Related: The Days of Cold Calling are Over
In the presentation system integration business, where I have spent the vast majority of my career, there is a widely recognized 95 percent rule, which reflects how the majority of integrators struggle to complete a project and they usually get stuck in the last five percent.
I have seen it as a consumer as well with enterprise software and hardware deployments. I have been sold on CRM packages, ERP solutions and data center configurations that are supposed to work one way but almost always come up just short.
So while helping your customer see the value of the application is the first major step to adding value, the second part is making sure the implementation is successful and the expected adopted rates are reached quickly and painlessly.
Adoption: If you identify the trends, assess the needs, determine the application and fail to gain adoption, you will fall flat on your face.
