Build customer relationships
Another lesson that Ginsburg has learned throughout his career is to build strong customer relationships.
“That comes down to having your sales organization not being afraid of asking the questions: How am I doing, what can I do differently for you, what are your needs, how do you see your future, and how can we help you make your business better?” he says.
You want to build that relationship so customers know you care about more than money.
“That is the key to most customer relationships: Are you a real partner or are you a transactional company that’s looking for the quick hit and then go find the next customer?”
That starts with thinking of your customer’s needs before your own.
“The basic advice is you’re not going to win every time,” Ginsburg says. “Be prepared to compromise and be prepared to, at times, sacrifice your own revenue stream because of the needs of any given set of customers. We all like to get up and pound our chest and say, ‘Boy, we can drive revenue through any kind of environment.’
While that’s a good thing to say, the reality is that in this environment it doesn’t happen as frequently, so that’s when you have to try to cooperate with your customers.
“What can be better than if someone, if a company in the customer relationship, takes a step back, understands what the need is, so that when you begin to move forward again as we are in 2010, … then next time around and the next opportunity, they’re wed to you in a way they wouldn’t otherwise be because they know you cared, you listened, you stepped back and you have an opportunity to move forward,” he says.
Also know what you can and can’t do to build the customer relationship.
“You cannot solve every problem for every one of your customers, but in your relationship with them, you certainly have to have enough listening posts and have enough data as we said to put in the matrix that there’s usually a similar story if you listen hard enough,” he says. “You can’t forgive everybody’s account receivable — if you did that, you’d be out of business, but you can hear if someone needs some extra time to pay or someone needs to work on a specific problem they’re having with another one of their customers, so you can become part of the solution.”
You also want to have multiple people in your organization listening to the customer instead of just one person.
“Have your managers and a number of diverse people in the room listening, and then get altogether inside the company and have the opportunity to have an open dialogue and have the participation of a group of people and not try to funnel it all through one person,” Ginsburg says. “Over the years, the times that I have made my largest errors is not reaching out to enough diverse opinion and listening and not having the right people in the room at the time the decision is made.
“This is just a little different that people saying you have to listen to everybody in the organization. That’s a little unattainable depending on the size of your organization, but if you have an organization of 50 to 100 salespeople, and you’re only listening to two sales managers, chances are you’re not getting deep enough, and it’s being channeled in a way that, as the general manager of the business, the CEO of the company, you’re not really listening hard enough.”
By applying these truths to his current businesses, he’s seen DG FastChannel reach $190 million in revenue last year, and Boardwalk Auto’s revenue was slightly greater than $250 million.
“It’s taking leadership responsibility, being candid with people and then communicate as best you can through managers and through your organization,” Ginsburg says. “… You should be able to make it through any period of time, and that’s what we’ve seen over the last 16, 17 months. Those who were ready, it wasn’t such a bad time, but those who weren’t ready, it was a terrible time.”
How to reach: Boardwalk Auto Group, www.boardwalkag.com; DG FastChannel Inc., (972) 581-2000 or www.dgfastchannel.com
