How to Stay in Tune With the Changing Priorities of Your Customers

Asking your customer to determine and define their top 5 priorities and ranking them from 1 to 5 should be the start of every prospect meeting - as well as part of existing customer meetings.

We are operating in a fast paced ever changing world where CEOs are cycled every couple years and organizations restructure, acquire, merge or re-brand themselves constantly.

That customer that you landed 5 years ago - by pulling out all the stops and killing yourself to make sure every delivery and invoice was perfect - has been a solid partner and reference that you are about to lose.

While you were bragging about your kid finally getting accepted to grad school, and your customer encouraged you to spend most of the allotted meeting time to share all the details - you missed your opportunity to ask if anything had changed in the business or your customer's priorities.

What you missed was that the customer's manager recently left the company and the new manager just implemented a bonus program where your customer could make a pretty hefty incentive if they put your business out to bid.

The new priority of your customer's business is to review all supplier contracts and consolidate vendors to reduce the strain on the Accounts Payable Department. Your competitor has distribution through 3 other suppliers already in play with your customer's business. Despite your "solid relationship" - you didn't keep your eye on the ball and check in with the customer to reconfirm their Core 5 priorities during your last meetings, you won't get a chance to stay in the game.

If you would have taken a few minutes before or after bragging about your kid getting into grad school to simply say, "I just want to check in on each of the Core 5 priorities you provided 5 years ago and make sure they haven't changed and that we are delivering as we committed on each one" - you would have learned about the changing priorities and had a chance to overcome the vendor consolidation issue.

Every single meeting must include a review, discussion and update of the customer's Core 5 top priorities and how they perceive your latest performance against them. Your CRM system updates should include this update - in detail for every customer meeting.

Not only are you ensuring the customer's needs are the priority of your discussion - you are keeping a long term record of how their Core 5 priorities ebbed and flowed over the years and how you adapted and aligned your service to stay in tune with their needs.

Trust me - someday down the road, when you are presenting to their senior leadership to renew your contract - you will blow them away when you demonstrate this type of focused alignment serving their needs.

As a side note - The Core 5 inventory is also a powerful tool to align the top needs and priorities of your spouse, children and others that you care about make sure you understand and support their top priorities.