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When you wish to know your customers better, what initiatives does your organization undertake? Do you go meet customers, organize customer events, design feedback forms to be filled up by customers, or even commission an external consultant to conduct a Customer Satisfaction Survey? You may be doing some or perhaps even all of these. Which is commendable as these exercises certainly help in understanding your customers better and cementing the relationship further.

But how many of you actually know where your core customers (the 20% who contribute to 80% of your turnover) have positioned you in their growth plans? Do they view you as a vital partner or just as a current supplier or service provider? Do they see you as a key contributor to their long term goals? Do you figure in their future plans? Based on their perceptions, how do they expect your organization and your people to respond to them? How do they position you vis-a-vis best of class firms of a similar nature?

Customers are everywhere – we just need to be tuned in to find them. Any committed executive having a little business orientation can spot them if only he or she applied themselves intelligently. For all the training and field trips that sales, business development and marketing teams are put through, sometimes simple common sense is what you need to land a good customer.

I was recently at a seminar organized by an industry body for a specific member group. The theme was to connect technology and industry for mutual benefit. Speaker after speaker, reading out from generic corporate presentations, extolled the virtues of their organization claiming their place as the best technology providers to industry.

A recent visit to an iconic book and music store reinforced that universal but at times uncomfortable truth– the world is changing and rapidly too. My family has spent hours in its outlets in Bangalore and Chennai browsing through the thousands of titles stocked. My daughter bought her first ever music album here and a majority of our book and music collection was also sourced from this store. It had been a while since I last shopped here – family had scattered while online shopping became more convenient. The store now had a massive sale ongoing that encouraged me to make that long overdue visit.