Reach: Cultivate Customer Loyalty and Reap Intel
By Ellen Wunder
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Reach - Ellen Wunder
challenges.
Foreword
The best businesses recognize that customers are at the core of everything that animates them. What is a customer? The word customer appears as a broad term throughout this book, referring to an individual or another business that promotes, sells, or purchases goods and services. A mutual need exists between the provider and the customer, which is the first step toward a relationship.
A customer could be an end consumer, a distributor or dealer in the middle,
or a franchisee. The principles and tactical suggestions in Reach apply to internal customers as well, whether they are team members, direct reports, superiors, or other departments. Sometimes, the best way to maximize customer loyalty is to begin in-house, by first identifying internal dysfunction.
In some industries, the changes in human communication and within layers of interaction are creating new challenges in identifying who the customer really is, which may feel like a moving target from year to year. Decision makers are sometimes insulated from the business partners with the best solutions.
The best customer–business partnerships require the relentless desire to know one another better.
Chapter 1
I’ve Forgotten More Than You Know
At the time, it seemed like such a victory: a classic overachiever lands a great job in her chosen field. All of the lights were green in the early weeks of training, during product and corporate orientations, and in the mock sales calls conducted by the trainer with the shoe-polish-black hair and pasty white skin.
After that, though, it was like a scene from a war movie when, at the beginning of combat, green recruits discover that they need to grow up sooner than they’d planned. In a market that hadn’t seen any truly innovative technology in years, my new company had recently introduced some groundbreaking products. The good news was that these products sold like wildfire, contributing to the creation of my new job. The bad news was that confusion about the products’ modes of action and performance had overwhelmed the then-current sales force, and hundredfold increases in complaint calls poured in from every region of the country. Newbies, like me, were called into action like the National Guard; in retrospect, it felt more like human sacrifice.
The last thing that the seasoned sales rep (who I was assigned to help
) wanted to see was me: green, naive, and female. Still, he was desperate enough to realize that he had no choice. His boat of stability had been rocked, and he was completely overwhelmed.
My first day was a disaster. The unscrupulous good ol’ boys and angry dealers sent me to look at bogus complaints, and I lacked the street sense to know that I’d been had. I attempted to regurgitate whatever I could recall from my training and dazzle them with scientific brilliance from some 400-level college class. No dice—there was not even an attempt of professional courtesy. An angry customer hit a line drive right at me: I’ve forgotten more than you know.
The sales rep who I was helping met me for dinner that night—after he had been briefed by his customers, of course. He said, in a condescending drawl, Sweetheart, let me save you some trouble. You’re just not cut out for this business.
I was humiliated. Staying in a hotel in the middle of nowhere with a rental car parked outside, I didn’t have many options in sight. Calling Dad—his hard-earned nickels had paid for my degree—and telling him that my big plans weren’t going to work out was certainly out of the question. Quitting wasn’t a choice, either; I had never accepted quitting or failure in anything in my life.
The next day meant me getting in the car and doing it all over again. Then and there, I made up my mind that there was still a job to do—a job that some warm body had to show up to perform. I was it
; there was no backup. There was a mess to deal with; somehow, I had to make a connection with these customers. Although I didn’t grasp it at the time, the crisis had very little to do with faulty products but much to do with inadequate customer understanding of what to expect regarding how the new products worked.
When I met that day’s first customer/adversary, I listened to his concerns while feeling sick to my stomach. This was a farmer with thousands of acres of a crop—his only payday for the year— that he believed to be in jeopardy. He was not looking for all of my classroom knowledge and academic awards and my two weeks of product training. I noticed that the early morning sun was casting odd shadows on the rows and suggested that we walk the fields to take a look—more to quell my nerves than his. I asked him about the land, how long it had been in his family, and whatever else I could think of. I Reached.
His anger and my nausea subsided as he told stories at length; at the same time, I scanned the ground for anything familiar. I coughed up the basics of the new product’s mode of action, while examining a few plants that showed signs of stress but also clear indications of overall health. It was not a dire situation. We discussed what he could expect in the coming weeks. I assured him that my company had no plans to abandon him, an assertion that I was partially making up—I was brand new at this, after all.
He led me to a nearby field on a hill, where I expected him to murder me and bury my body beneath his weedy soybeans. Instead, he picked peaches and plums from his small orchard. He sent me on my way with a lovely basket of fruit and his thanks for my help. I knew not one iota more than I had known the day before, but he said that I had helped, even though he had done most of the talking. Somehow, I had created an emotional connection that changed everything, and nothing would ever be the same.
℘
The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.
—Peter Drucker (1909–2005; consultant, professor, and author, hailed as The Inventor of Management
)
Learning to Reach goes beyond any job description that I’ve had. Connecting with a customer, in good times as well as bad, has many rewards. Beyond solving immediate problems, making emotional connections yields precious benefits in what is often a hard and cold world. Emotional connections drive and maintain loyalty—sometimes, in ways that defy logic. Ultimately, customers who feel that connection will reveal secrets that money can’t buy.
At times, I find it difficult to explain the Reach consulting work that I do now. I used to explain that I conduct outreach for companies that want to connect with their customers in a real and powerful way. However, that word, outreach,
is loaded with all kinds of negative connotations; do any Internet search on it, and you’ll find organizations dedicated to programs that address problems such as drug addiction, homelessness, and poverty, or religious ministries that are often directed toward drug addicts, the homeless, and materially and morally impoverished individuals.
In general, outreach initiatives presume the existence of a problem: a situation of lack or dysfunction. Often, the businesses I contact assume that I’m calling because of something they did that they shouldn’t have done or because they’re delinquent in some way. It’s similar to when you hear a siren and you get the paranoid feeling that the cops are after you.
Many of us hear from some friends or relatives only when they have problems. Certain names that appear on caller ID immediately evoke a response of What does that person want now?
or I’ll let it go to voicemail.
Frequently, you’ll hear from a company with which you work when it’s sending a bill, alerting you to a recall of a faulty product, or reminding