Talk To Your Customers About Their Business Challenges, Or Else
By The Business Solutions Network
Yesterday kicked off the Fall ONE Ingram Micro conference in Las Vegas. Upon arrival, I had the opportunity to catch up with Ingram’s new DC/POS leader, Jeff Yelton. You might recall a recent interview I had with Yelton where he highlighted a handful of technology areas he thought solutions providers should focus to have success. During this conversation, we didn’t talk technology as we did business acumen.
More specifically, Yelton urges VARs and solutions providers to have deeper conversations with customers to remain a trusted advisor. With all the new technologies coming out, it might not make sense to jump at each opportunity. However, you at least have to be speaking with your customers about these things. If not, Yelton cautions, you leave the door open for competitors to come in and appear as more of a thought leader than you.
Yelton urges solutions providers to think not about how they can shoehorn a technology they sell onto a customer, but rather to have in-depth conversations with your customers about their business challenges and then try to figure out how you might be able to overcome those challenges with technology (even technology that you might not currently offer).
If you aren’t talking to your customers, you run the risk of losing them. Yelton recalls a recent conversation he had with a retailer he was visiting (part of a 150-store chain, by the way). Yelton asked off-handedly how they were addressing EMV. The store owner didn’t know what EMV was and quickly realized that his VAR of 20 years might not be best suited to help him navigate future retail challenges. Indeed, the store owner asked Yelton if he could recommend someone who might be able to help him going forward.
That’s just one small example. Rest assured your customers are being hit daily, whether from your competition or the media, about all sorts of new technologies. Whether you offer them or not, having regular detailed business conversations with customers can put you on the offensive and defensive where customer retention is concerned. Additionally, it can uncover new ways you might be able to help your customers, leading to new sales. Finally, learning about the business challenges of one customer will most likely make you smarter when it comes to helping other customers in the same vertical. Having such detailed business challenge conversations is all upside.