Create customer value
Your vision begins with the reason you’re in business: your customers. More specifically, it stems from what you do for them.
“You’ve got to find your niche in the marketplace, and then you have to build what differentiates you from the competitors, what value you’re going to bring,” Danner says. “Define what creates the most value for your customer and the organization, and you tailor your vision around that.”
It takes curiosity to find that value, which means you have to ask a lot of questions. You’re really examining past successes and failures to find future opportunities.
With employees, you’re asking about their previous interactions with customers: Why did the customer call? Did we meet that need?
When you’re talking to customers, it goes beyond the basic question of: How are we doing?
“You have to ask those, but then as you get into the future and trying to create value, you start delving into, increasingly, what are they frustrated about, both with us and with other vendors,” Danner says. “What are they having the hardest time accomplishing in the space that we’re providing them services? You just keep digging around their frustrations and ultimately you get to your opportunity.”
Even if the customer says your service is great, keep digging. Ask what you could do differently to get more business.
“Since customers want to solve their problems, they want to find partners that will solve their problems,” Danner says. “If all you ever do is just show up and ask them a thousand questions and never give them any solutions, they’ll get tired of you fairly quickly. But as long as you’re working together and creating value and they can see where this is going, sure, they’ll talk to you forever.”
Customers might not be able to pinpoint the big-picture problem. But they may know, for example, that they’re confused by your invoices. Even that’s a starting point to improve your service.
“You circle back and you solve the invoicing question — which is really not the key part of the service you’re providing, but by doing so, it makes the company easier to do business with and you’ve solved a customer’s problem,” Danner says. “So it’s an example of how asking questions can lead to a better opportunity.”