Why is strategy so critical for an organization? There is a saying in Tamizh “Don’t let your legs into the water without knowing its depth”. Shouldn’t we know who, why, what, when, where and how will a customer engage with you? Simplistically said, if we have answers to these 5W1H, we have all that we need to build a strategy. Let’s get into each one of these and see its relevance and impact to building a strategy.
Who is my customer?
A generic comment from a lot of entrepreneurs is that “everyone running a business can be my customer” and a few more who are into solutions/products for specific domains, try to fit it to be applicable to a wider market. Does it really help? For one, it does lead to a confused market pitch, market understanding, need analysis and positioning. It does lead to a false sense of a far greater market potential than is. It does lead to a potential customer being confused on what exactly do you do. As a System Integration (a term used to position yourself better than a VAR 
Let’s look at the subsequent challenges:
The sales folks were confused on what exactly where we solving for a customer. It was too difficult for anyone to grasp the entire pitch of the company and its portfolio of solutions. Sales training wasn’t going to help a salesperson get a hang of the portfolio of the products that he could meaningfully represent to a potential customer. We then built a presales team to help the sales team to understand and translate the technology issues into relevant solutions. We needed the sales team to understand business challenges and get them to the presales team. But with an undefined customer target segment, the number of revisions in the solutions proposed increased, since budgetary issues, technology issues, lack of understanding the roadmap of the customer were reasonable excuses. Longer sales cycle, huge cost of customer acquisition, customer experience impact and dissatisfaction from both sides when the deal comes to fruition. As a solution provider you look at all the efforts, but the customer wants to pay for the outcome and deduct for the delay too. A general feeling of incapability could be raised by the customer whereas the feeling internally could be about the customer not appreciating your efforts and expertise (or the lack of it)
Though the example is from the IT solution provider, it becomes applicable across domains and industries. A continuous evaluation of “Who” your customer is mandatory for ensuring a great customer experience. You train your salespeople, align with the right technology and products, get your production and manufacturing standards in alignment with expectations of your customer segment. When you define your customer world, you can define the qualities, capabilities, skills and the standards adherence of your people and processes and thereby profitability.
Answer these questions for yourself:
1. Who are the best possible to be my potential customers?
a. What would they buy from me?
b. Would it be profitable for me?
c. Would I be able to provide a great customer experience for them?
d. Would my people and the stakeholders benefit from this defined customer set?
e. Would I be able to sustain, grow and thrive for the next 3 years?
We will discuss in detail about the other 5W1H in the subsequent blogs!!
