What was normal supplier behavior? In other words, what did suppliers typically do to build relationships, uncover needs, solve problems, execute work, and so on? Benchmarking is customarily thought of as a comparison of product or service features, technology or technical solutions to problems, business processes, and other aspects of a business operation where one company’s state-of-the-art approach can help other companies raise the bar for themselves by learning the best practices being used. When we benchmark, we establish what the best-in-class is. We normally do not apply the term to behavioral comparisons, except when companies compare customer service practices, which, as we have said, is but a small part of your total behavior externally with customers and internally with employees. However, it’s clear that behavior can be benchmarked. It is possible to research and understand what the companies that are best-in-class in behavioral differentiation do to achieve that distinction. We described a number of their practices in Winning Behavior.
The key is to understand, first, what constitutes the behavioral norm in your industry. In other words, what do customers normally expect and how are they normally treated by suppliers like you who are currently working with them or are seeking to do so? Clearly, it’s easier for B2C companies to benchmark behavior because, as consumers themselves, they have relatively easy access to their competitors’ sales channels and can appreciate the consumer’s experience firsthand. A car retailer can buy from a rival dealership and experience the sales and service processes that are part of the total experience. Restaurateurs can eat in their rivals’ restaurants and experience how diners are treated. It’s more challenging to experience the customer’s experience in the B2B marketplace, but it can be done. Here are six ways:
1. Survey your employees who have worked for either competitors’ or customers’ companies. Ask them these kinds of questions:
IF THEY WORKED FOR A CUSTOMER:
What was normal supplier behavior? In other words, what did suppliers typically do to build relationships, uncover needs, solve problems, execute work, and so on?
What did you expect from all suppliers, no matter who they were?
What did suppliers normally do when they were trying to establish a relationship and sell their products or services? What did they normally do when they were performing work? How did they follow up?
How did you measure supplier performance? What was the difference between the best and worst suppliers?
When suppliers delighted you in some positive way, what did they do? What was delightful? Conversely, when suppliers disappointed you, what did they do wrong? What disappointed you?
What did it take for suppliers to become long-term trusted partners with your company? What supplier behaviors built or destroyed customer loyalty?
IF THEY WORKED FOR A COMPETITOR:
What did your former company do best in building business and serving customers? What were its best practices in building relationships, making sales, executing work, maintaining equipment or systems, performing customer service, and so on?
Who in that company was renowned for having “good customer hands”? Who had the best customer-management skills and talent? What made this person so good? How did he or she behave toward customers that enabled him or her to build strong and lasting relationships?
What policies, procedures, or standard practices in that company gave it a competitive edge? What did people in the company routinely do that was different from and better than what its competitors did?
What positive feedback did that company receive from customers? What did customers say they particularly liked? Conversely, what negative feedback did customers give? What did the company or its people do that irritated or frustrated customers?
2. Hire as consultants people who have retired from or otherwise left a customer’s organization and ask the same kinds of questions as just cited. Clearly, you want to hire people who have intimate knowledge of how you and your competitors interacted with people in the customer’s organization and how the customer perceived you and competing suppliers. The best sources are people who have good business sense, are observant, and can offer insights into behavioral differences among suppliers. You want consultants who were on the receiving end of supplier behavior, but beware of hiring the most senior ex-customers simply because they were very senior. They may not have as useful a perspective as less-senior people with more consistent supplier contact.
3. Survey your customers and ask them for behavioral benchmarks without explicitly naming your competitors—or, for that matter, any suppliers. First, ask them what they expect from partner suppliers. Then ask them, generically, what their suppliers have done that they liked and valued or disliked and devalued. You don’t want names. You just want to know which behaviors they found valuable and which ones they didn’t. Finally, ask them what your company and its people have done that they liked or disliked, as well as what you could do to be an even better supplier to them. You have to ensure when setting up this kind of customer survey that they don’t see it as an attempt to “dig up dirt on the competition.” Your purpose should be to discover how to improve the way you work, to learn how to make it easier for them to work with you, to remove any obstacles or barriers to how you are serving them, and so on.
4. Benchmark other industries. Look for superior behaviors in other fields and consider what behaviors you could adopt. Sometimes, the most innovative ideas come from this kind of examination, but you have to look and think outside the box. You have to be open to ideas that may seem strange or irrelevant at first. What could you learn from Disney’s “cast member” concept at their theme parks? Or from Ritz-Carlton’s daily line-ups and credo card? What could you learn from Chuck-E-Cheese? Starbucks? Marshall Field’s? United Airlines? PBS? The Girl Scouts of America? The United States Marine Corps? Clearly, not everything these organizations do is worth emulating, but you can learn as much from a bad behavioral experience or a mediocre one as you can from the best experiences.
We have found that when you begin consciously thinking about behavior, you begin to recognize the behaviors we all take for granted (the ones in the vast middle hump of the bell curve) and the ones that distinguish people positively or negatively. You also begin to see how your own behavior toward customers creates their impression of you and affects their willingness to do further business with you.
5. Examine your own suppliers. Which of their behaviors seem normal to you? That is, which behaviors are unremarkable—neither positive nor negative? How do you expect any supplier to behave in normal circumstances? What do they all do that is similar? Then look at your best and worst suppliers. How do they behave differently? What do the best ones do that the worst ones don’t, and vice versa? Survey your own purchasing directors and supply chain managers. You can learn a number of lessons about BD by examining how your own suppliers differentiate themselves.
6. Last, examine your own wins and losses, as well as your most successful and least successful program or project managers. It is sometimes difficult to see what the people who are naturally good at BD do that makes them good at BD. You almost have to shadow them and observe their behavior with customers and employees. They may or may not be fully aware of their behaviors that make a difference, so asking them for a list of best behavioral practices is often not useful.
There is nothing earthshakingly new in our suggestions about how to do behavioral benchmarking. Most of this is common sense. The point is to be more self-conscious about behaviors toward customers that are normal and therefore indistinguishable and about those behaviors that are significantly better or worse than the norm. Extremely positive and negative behaviors are blatant enough to leap out at the most casual observer, but it takes a discerning eye to recognize the more subtle behaviors that can have a differentiating impact on customers. Often, as we’ve said before, the difference is a smile where it wasn’t expected, a quick response to an e-mailed question, a thank-you card that no one else sent, a telephone call on a weekend with a sudden brainstorm about how to reduce a cost, a degree of diligence and responsiveness that stands out, and so on.
The word chiaroscuro refers to the treatment of light and shade in painting or the use of contrast in literature. In painting, the arrangement of light and dark elements creates a meaningful contrast, and that in effect is what we are trying to achieve as we benchmark behavior. We want to find a meaningful contrast between behaviors that attract customers and those that repel customers, and we want to understand that vast, undifferentiated middle ground where behavior has no discernible effect because it is indistinguishable from how everyone else behaves. The typical outcome of behavioral benchmarking is two lists of behaviors: the positives and the negatives. In effect, you want to create a behavioral bell curve like the one depicted in Figure 3-2, emphasizing the significant behaviors on either wing of the curve. This kind of display of your findings helps people grasp the demarcations between what’s normal and what’s extraordinary, and it is helpful later when you examine your own behaviors at various customer touch points.