Buyer orientation - understanding and
satisfying your customers - is essential for commercial success. This guide
explains how small companies can profit from understanding their customers.
Understanding one's customers is so important
that large corporations spend hundreds of millions annually on market research.
Although such formal research is important, a small firm can usually avoid this
expense. Typically, the owner or manager of a small concern knows the customers
personally. From this foundation, understanding of your customers can be built
by a systematic effort. A comprehensive system for understanding is what
Rudyard Kipling called his six honest serving men. "Their names are What
and Why and When and How and Where and Who."
What
A seller characterizes what customers are buying as goods and services - toothpaste, drills, video games. cars. . . But understanding of buyers starts with the realization that they purchase benefits as well as products. Consumers don't select toothpaste. Instead. some will pay for a decay preventive. Some seek pleasant taste. Others want bright teeth. Or perhaps any formula at a bargain price will do.
A seller characterizes what customers are buying as goods and services - toothpaste, drills, video games. cars. . . But understanding of buyers starts with the realization that they purchase benefits as well as products. Consumers don't select toothpaste. Instead. some will pay for a decay preventive. Some seek pleasant taste. Others want bright teeth. Or perhaps any formula at a bargain price will do.
Similarly, industrial purchasing agents are
not really interested in drills. They want holes. They insist on quality
appropriate for their purposes, reliable delivery when needed, safe operation,
and reasonable prices.
Video games are fun. They are bought for home
entertainment, family togetherness, development of personal dexterity, introduction
to computers, among other satisfactions. Commercial customers include arcades,
pizza parlors, and assorted enterprises. They benefit from a potential source
of income, a means of attracting buyers to their premises, or perhaps a
competitive move.
Similarly, cars are visible evidence of a
person's wealth, reflection of life style, a private cabin for romance. Or they
represent receipts from leases, means to pursue an occupation. . . Some people
even buy cars for transportation.
You must find out, from their point of view,
what customers are buying. The common names of products mean as little to them
as the chemical names on the label of a proprietary drug. (A sick person's real
need is safe. speedy relief.) Understanding your customers enables you to
profit by providing what buyers seeks - satisfaction.
Products change, but basic benefits like
personal hygiene, attractiveness, safety, entertainment, and privacy endure. So
do commercial purposes such as quests for competitive superiority or profitability.
Successful manufacturers and service
establishments produce benefits for which customers are willing to pay.
Successful wholesalers and retailers select offerings of such demanded benefits
that they can resell at a profit. Successful businesspeople, in other words.
understand the reason for their customers' buying decisions.
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