I was recently asked how a business can generate more revenue from existing customers. The most obvious answer is to educate your customers on what you offer, and dig deeper to find more selling opportunities within their organization. In my opinion, this “easy” approach is the wrong approach.
My wife likes to tell the story of how her prom date, in the middle of a very nice expensive dinner, proceeded to lick his knife clean. My wife was horrified, and that first date became the last. The poor guy probably had no idea why he never got another date, as she certainly didn’t tell him. Many businesses treat their prospects as dates during the sales process, and if they don’t “lick the knife”, they might get them as customers. However, as with marriage, you have to continue to “date” your customer. This means you have to be thinking about making the customer happy, and treating them the way they want and need to be treated. If you fail to do so, your customer will leave you and probably won’t say why.
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I was recently asked to comment on how an IT manager can most effectively build partnerships with the business side of the company. Having a very technical background and a business background as well, I have had the benefit of sitting on both sides of the fence. To the IT director, the IT department is the heart and soul of the company; without IT the company would grind to a halt. To the rest of the business, IT is often looked at as a necessary evil. They don’t really understand what IT does, and they often don’t care. They just want their computers to run quickly, their printers to print, and they want their reports to contain accurate data that they need to get their jobs done. This dual perspective can create tension between IT and the rest of the company, with IT feeling unappreciated and the other departments feeling that they are at the mercy of IT.
For an IT director to be successful, he or she needs to bridge the gap between the technical side of the house and the operations side.
Late last year, it was my pleasure to co-facilitate two peer discussion groups regarding protecting your customer base at the CompTIA event in Las Vegas. I found the experience to be fun and enlightening. CompTIA did a great job of setting up and educating the facilitators on running the groups. I was paired up with Gennifer Biggs from Business Solutions. I have known Gennifer from numerous other industry events and thoroughly enjoyed working with her.
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