By Don Wetmore
Time Management
Don Wetmore
If you oversaw the marketing for customers in a company, you would be wise to poll your customers from time to time to determine why they chose to do business with your company.
We can always assume why customers do business with us, but this can be risky because we may be wrong. What we think we are providing may be opposite to what customers desire to receive. A good question then to ask our customers would be, “How do you know when we are doing an excellent job for you?”
The answers we receive may be all over the lot. Customers think we are doing an excellent job for them when we provide products and services at the lowest price, or that we are conveniently located, or that we have a friendly staff, or combinations of these and many other reasons.
If you know why your customers are doing business with your company, you can emphasize more of those reasons in your marketing efforts to attract more customers.
Give them what they want, not what you think they need.
Each of us is like being the president of a company: “Me, Inc.” Your major customer is your boss, who has control over your future pay raises and promotions.
Ask the Boss Question: “Boss, how do you know when I am doing an excellent job for you?”
It is risky for us to assume what the answers might be. For example, you may assume your boss thinks you are doing an excellent job when you are innovative and creative, producing innovative ideas. The boss, however, may be threatened by all that and feel more comfortable when you do not rock the boat.
You may assume that the boss is comfortable with your performance when there are no complaints. But the boss may measure your performance on the number of unsolicited compliments he receives from others about how well you are doing your job.
Most employees seem uncomfortable raising the Boss Question. It will be addressed eventually, at an annual review, when they discover that they did not get a pay raise or advancement that they thought they had earned because for the last year they had been going down a path opposite to the boss’ expectations.
Your productivity and success can be diminished, not because you were not working hard enough, but because of miscommunication that kept you from delivering what your customer, your boss, really wanted.
It is a clever idea to ask the Boss Question a couple of times throughout the year as the boss’s expectations can change and we need to always be moving forward together in harmony.
Don Wetmore is a certified business coach and the author of “The Productivity Handbook” and “Organizing Your Life.” Contact him at 203-394-8216 or ctsem@msn.com.