STRATEGY CENTRAL

It’s a common assumption…that customers are irrational.  Not a very good assumption.  But it is out there.  In fact, you may have fallen prey to it.  At some point you may have found yourself thinking, "They [your customers] must be insane to not snap up this deal!"  Or, "they just don’t know what’s good for ‘em." 

Probably we’ve all thought it at one point or another.  It is dangerous though.  Here’s Peter Drucker’s take, from The Practice of Management:

"To assume—as has lately become fashionable—that customers are irrational is as dangerous a mistake as it is to assume that the customer’s rationality is the same as that of the manufacturer or supplier—or that it should be (p. 96)."

Why does it matter to all of us?  Well…the tendency is to make excuses for what we’re doing when it doesn’t have the effect we thought it would (or predicted it would).  What should we be doing?  Call it what it is.  And take a look at the real world of your customers.

Ever looked intently at your business, like you would at one of those Magic Eye images where if you really concentrate you might eventually see a whole layer that you didn’t see at first?  Those things are cool.  Fascinating to try and see what’s in there.  I’ve found it’s helpful to stand in a certain way, with no reflection or glare, and focus my eyes on just that image.  Those tactics enable a deeper look.  Suddenly the outline of a deeper image will begin to emerge.  It’s really sudden.  And then, there it is.

In some ways, those Magic Eye illustrations are a lot like trying to really understand the world of your customers.

I loved this line today from Managing for Results by Peter Drucker:

"The most important questions about a business are those that try to penetrate the real world of the consumer, the world in which the manufacturer and his products barely exist (p. 101)."

So much like a Magic Eye illustration, we often are only looking at the surface…our own reality…when what we need to be doing is looking much deeper, at the real world of our customers, the only place that matters to them.

How deep into that world do you think you’re looking?  What are you doing to enable a deeper look?  Or are you only seeing the image at the very surface?