Gathering Information on the Customer

A sensible guideline when you are developing a relationship with a customer is never to ask a question about his or her company or business that you could have answered from another source. Consider the impression you convey when you ask the customer the obvious fact-finding questions: “I didn’t have the energy to look this up myself. I haven’t thought about you until this meeting. I was too busy to take the time. You didn’t have anything better to do than answer my questions, did you?” In this age of information glut, not doing your homework before you talk to customers is inexcusable. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with confirming something you are unsure of, filling in the gaps, or asking questions about areas that are not public knowledge, but failing to do your homework is admitting to a degree of carelessness or laziness that is likely to result in negative BD. At a minimum, gather all the publicly available information you can find on customers before meeting with them the first time. Download their Web site and study it. If they are publicly traded, read their annual reports for the past three years and news or magazine articles about them. Know who they are, what they do, what markets and customers they serve, how they differentiate themselves, what their strategies are, what problems or challenges they’ve had lately, who their key people are, how they are organized, etc.

The smartest companies we’ve seen create “prospect books” that detail everything they can discover about a prospect before they make that first contact. Included in these books is an intelligence needs list that identifies everything they want to know about the customer. They convert this list into a set of questions for forthcoming meetings or telephone calls with the customer. In those meetings, they look more informed because they are more informed, and they behave accordingly. They ask better, more insightful questions and avoid the simple fact-finding questions that annoy customers and waste time. The result is behavioral differentiation. Here’s a quick self-test: How many times have you gone into a meeting with a prospect knowing very little about the person? How many times have you and your colleagues decided how you were going to approach the meeting in the elevator on the way up to a prospect’s office? Whatever your answers are, we are confident that this happens regularly. Many people have told us so.

Inexperienced players are too often impatient. They want to get to the end quickly, and jib at the time spent in a complete analysis of the position, with the result that they do not fathom its peculiarities, the differences between their game and that of their opponent, the weaknesses, threats, the chances on either side, etc. Failing to do this, they often lose a game which, with a little care, they might otherwise have at least drawn and perhaps won.—Eugene A. Znosko-Borovsky, How Not to Play Chess

Particularly important in your initial information gathering is understanding the prospective customer’s culture and self-image. One often-effective way to behaviorally differentiate yourself is to go into those early meetings already knowing how the people in this organization think about themselves, what’s important to them, what they individually and collectively value, and what their dos and taboos are. Knowing their operating principles and mentioning them during your meetings is impressive to most customers. Knowing and using customers’ language and matching their operating style says that you are adaptable and are striving to be compatible with them. Knowing customers well from the outset says that you care enough to make the effort to learn. It says that you are a thoughtful potential supplier and will probably be a thoughtful partner. It says that you pay attention to details and want to get them right. Even something as mundane as gathering information during your initial customer meetings can be a rich opportunity to differentiate yourself behaviorally from your competitors.

Beyond those initial meetings, knowing your customers and their industry well is a prerequisite to building the kind of trust and credibility with customers that encourages them to seek you out as a thought partner and counselor. In professional services firms like Heidrick & Struggles, knowing clients well is a professional responsibility and the foundation of long-term client relationships. Michael Flagg, managing partner of H&S’s global communications practice, observes how being a thought partner to clients is a differentiator: “You differentiate yourself with clients by providing deep and independent thought. You must have the conviction to speak your mind, even when you aren’t asked for your opinion, and to suggest in the politest but firmest way what you think the client should or should not be doing. Sometimes, you have to push them pretty hard because at the end of the day you have to own the problem. If you are not willing to go toe-to-toe with your clients on sensitive issues, you limit your value.”⁷ Clearly, you are in a privileged position relative to your competitors if your customers think of you as a trusted counselor and advisor. You behaviorally differentiate yourself when you have done your homework, know the industry, know the customer, and use the wisdom that comes from your experience and knowledge to add insight during your dialogues with customers. You ensure that value is flowing in both directions, which creates quality face time. In short, you win the battle for customer mind share.