Valuable Accounts

There is a saying (the only attribution I can find is that it comes from a fortune cookie!) that goes, “Though we cannot change the direction of the wind, we can adjust our sails.” With the uncertainty being thrown at us over the last few years, we have all had to make a lot of adjustments in our sails.

But, what adjustments do we make? What direction is the wind blowing? What direction will it blow?

There is no better compass for businesses than their customers. While simply asking them where you should go clearly sends the wrong message (a message of weakness), asking the right questions will help you find your way.

1.      Ask your customers where their business is headed. Who better to travel with than your customers? Find out what they think is happening in their markets and work together to address those markets.

2.      Ask your customers what challenges they are encountering. As the line from Jerry Maguire goes, “Help me, help you.” You don’t have to be quite that dramatic about it, but you get the idea. Nothing will endear you to your customers more than helping them solve their problems.

3.      Ask your customers what challenges their customers are encountering. Not only is this a good indication of pressures in the market, it will also allow you to add more value for your customer by helping them help their customers to succeed.

4.      Ask your customers where they are spending their innovation dollars. Are there any areas where co-creation might make sense? Working together in a successful initiative can create an unbreakable bond.

The real key is open communication with your customers about topics that will enable you both to adjust your sails and take advantage of the power created by the wind. Working together with your customers for the benefit of their businesses will have a dramatic and positive impact on yours.

Do you ever feel that no matter what heights you achieve, your customers are never happy? Do you ever feel that as a customer you are taken for granted? If you are like most everyone, your answer to both questions is, “Yes.” And here is the really crazy thing—those feelings are happening on both sides of the same relationship!

One pretty common human emotion that causes this is the propensity to feel like the “grass is greener on the other side.”

If our customers are thinking that we take them for granted, yet we are continuing to deliver and go above and beyond, what gives? What causes such a disconnect? We may think we are pulling out all the stops to make them so happy they would never think about trying the grass on the other side, but often we are trying the wrong things in the eyes of our customers.

Every restaurant wants to give me a punch card, and I know they are trying to give me a free meal to get me to eat there more often. The problem is, I hate carrying around the punch cards and I never remember to bring them so they become more of a nuisance than a gift. They may think they are going out of their way to do something nice for me. It just isn’t anything meaningful to me.

Reach out to your customers and find out what they need from you. What would show them your efforts to go above and beyond? What could you do that would surprise them (positively!) and keep them loyal to you?

Find out what they are thinking, what they want, what they need, and deliver. You know the grass is not greener on your competitor’s side of the fence. Now prove it to your customers.

I have a sign that sits in front of me on my desk in a place that I can’t help but see it many times each day. It is number 17 of the Creed of the Sociopathic Obsessive Compulsive and it says:

Patience is a virtue, but persistence to the point of success is a blessing.

I can’t get this off my mind today. I met this morning with a friend who is an account manager for a large technology company and he told me about a little trouble he has been having with one of his larger accounts. “Yeah, we dropped the ball on a couple things and they are upset. I’ll give it some time and they will come around.”

Come around? Customers don’t come around. They respond to the value that we offer them through the experience they receive (including our products and services and the way we take care of them). When they have a good experience with us, they increase their share of wallet with us. When the experience is bad, they increase their share of wallet with our competitors that offer a better experience.

So while my friend is practicing Zen-like patience waiting for his customer to come around, his competitors are about to discover that their persistence in providing value is about to pay off.

If patience includes taking customers for granted, settling for the status quo and finding reasons not to take actions to improve the experience your customers receive, it is no virtue. It is a curse.

Customers require constant attention; actually, they deserve constant attention. Those who provide it will prosper. Those who wait for their customers to come around will suffer.

Serving customers in a way that creates a loyal following is hard. Add in the complexities created by an indirect go-to-market strategy and the degree of difficulty rivals the reverse 4 ½ somersault in the pike position (4.8 out of 5.0).

Why is such a strategy difficult? The main reason is that many of the actual interactions with the customers are conducted by your channel partners, not by your people. It also creates a more complex relationship comprised of several relationships as shown below.

There are several companies that have built a strong channel and leveraged that go-to-market strategy to drive revenues and create market expansion. Here are some of the ways in which these companies have created a strong customer experience with indirect customers.

1.      Listen to your customers. It doesn’t matter so much whether the customers are served directly or indirectly, their demand is still driving your revenues. A strong Voice of the Customer program helps understand the customer experience from their perspective. Make sure to share the feedback and insights with your channel partners—much of the action and follow-up required might come from the partners themselves.

2.      Listen to your partners. Lots to learn here. First, how can you improve the experience of partnering with you? How can you make it easier to work with you? How can you build a preference for your brand? How can we drive more business together, benefiting both our businesses and growing our market share?

3.      Listen some more to your partners. Your partners are dealing face-to-face with your customers and they are learning from your customers every day. They are learning what it is like to experience your products, what unmet needs they have, and how they interact with your partners. These insights can help us to create the consistent experience we know customers thirst for.

4.      Treat your partners like customers. I know we don’t think of them this way, but channel partners are customers. We sell to them (and through them), we invoice them, we collect from them. While they are a conduit to the ultimate customer, they buy from us and help us drive revenues. We need to treat them like customers and focus a little attention on them. Part of being customer-focused is being partner-focused.

The best way to deal with complex situations is to break them down into manageable pieces. Eat the elephant one bite at a time. In this case that means understanding all aspects of the channel and understanding how we interact and create an exceptional experience for channel partners and customers.

There is a very important and early stage in our lives when we are impressionable and learn quite easily. Many of the things we learn during this stage are taught to us by our mothers and they apply to life as well as to our businesses. Here are three things that apply to our customers:

1.      Do Unto Others. I don’t know about you, but I heard this one a lot. I can still hear her saying, “Would you want your friends to treat you that way?” Same goes for our customers. We should treat them the way we want to be treated as customers…fairly, honestly, candidly, helpfully. This is a pretty simple way to think about how to deal with a variety of situations involving customers…if I were the customer, how would I want to be treated?

2.      Life’s Not Fair. A classic “mom” line, isn’t it? And, of course, the older we get, the more we understand the simple wisdom of the statement. Sometimes things don’t go our way with our customers. Maybe some external influence like the economy or a particularly unethical competitor gets in the way. Hey, life’s not fair. Don’t whine about it, rise above it. If it’s the economy, know that your customer is dealing with it too and help them work through their issues. If it is that competitor that promises the world and can’t even deliver a neighborhood, stay the course, help your customers and you will eventually be rewarded for it. Life’s not fair, but that’s not an excuse for failure to deliver.

3.      You Have a Responsibility to the Team. OK, credit to the coach (Dad) on this one. When you were part of a sports team at my house, you learned quickly that it was not about your individual performance, it was about the team. Many of us serve our customers in team environments, whether they are teams of your people or teams involving customer personnel. Remember your responsibility to the team. You and team should always be focused on driving the customer experience and you must all be pulling in the same direction, working together, collaborating.

Would your mom be proud of the way you are serving your customers today?

If you go to a horse track and intend to place bets on certain horses, you will likely end up looking at a racing form that looks something like this. My first reaction? Wow, there is a lot of data here and I’ll bet most of it is important. But, what I really need to know is which horse is going to win and how much should I bet on that horse.

Same thing happens with customer listening initiatives. There is a lot of data … answers to several questions provided by many customers. And, it is likely all important in some way. But where the rubber hits the road (or in this case, where the hooves hit the dirt) is in the analysis that is predictive (what is going to happen?) and prescriptive (what should I do about it?).

These initiatives should tell you:

1.      Which customers are likely to defect and what can we do to stop them (assuming they are good customers and we want to stop them!)?

2.      Which customers are likely to refer us, buy new offerings, give us additional share of wallet, etc., and what can we do to leverage and accelerate these behaviors?

3.      Given our current customer experience, what is likely to happen to our market share, customer profitability, top line growth, etc., and how can we optimize those success measures?

4.      Which customers are not likely to help us grow and what are the irritants causing them to refrain from helpful behaviors?

Whether you are betting on the ponies or betting resources that you can improve your growth and profitability, having the right data, analyzing it correctly and focusing on the important insights will increase your odds of success. A focus on your ultimate objective—increased shareholder value through profitable growth, rather than an artificial score like satisfaction or NPS—will point your analyses in the right direction.

Companies that have excelled at the art of customer focus display many admirable traits, but key among them is empathy for their customers. Here are three ways empathy is manifested in the way they operate:

1.      Focus on Customer Success. There is a strong realization that focusing on helping their customers succeed is the best way for them to succeed. These companies are always thinking about helping their customers. The goal is customer success, not sales figures or customer loyalty scores.

2.      Implement World Class Customer Listening. These companies generally have multiple listening posts and are very focused on understanding the ways in which they interact with customers. Their customer listening efforts are designed to understand the relationships they have with customers and what really drives those relationships. These companies are constantly looking for new and additional ways to generate insights about the ways in which they touch customers.

3.      Never Be Satisfied. One of the common threads I have noticed among some of the most successful companies is their inherent inability to ever be satisfied. These companies constantly strive to make the experience for their customers better. Better than it was the day before, better than their competitors and better than the customers expect.

Walk a mile in your customer’s shoes. Understand what it is like to work with you—from their perspective. If you aren’t too easily satisfied with the status quo, you just might find opportunities to help your customers and your company succeed.

We are all cutting costs. Have to. There is simply no choice for most companies because most companies are facing greater competition for lesser total demand.

One problem this can create is a set of competing motives in the area of change management. On one hand, austerity programs create the need for more change, change that creates efficiencies and, therefore, reduces overall costs. At the same time, many of these change programs require some resources to execute. And those resources can be difficult to find.

A simple example is in the area of customer support. We all know that not solving the customer’s problem on the first call is expensive. It results in follow-on calls, potentially other type of warranty work or, in the worst case, a lost customer. While additional, higher level contact center representatives may dramatically improve “first call resolution,” the cost of adding the additional resources can be a challenge sale.

I found this graphic in my “Strategic Planning—Keep” file. The copy I have is attributed to the American Productivity and Quality Center. It is a simple graphic that puts forth the theory that you need 5 ingredients for successful change and shows the impact of missing ingredients.

A shortage of resources will lead to frustration as your people try to accomplish tasks without the right tools. Pretty intuitive. In tough times, this barrier moves way up the list. This is the barrier that I hear about most right now as companies are trying to do more with less.

The best way out of this jam is to prioritize your resource needs and focus on the changes that will be the most visible to your customers. Internal tasks or resources spent on internal non-value-added initiatives might be able to take a back seat to your customers during these times. This chart is an oldie, but it is a good reminder of the necessary ingredients and what we should expect when we fail to include them all.

Are we or aren’t we headed for a double-dip recession? Hard to say, especially since most of us feel like we never left the first recession. So how about this premise: It doesn’t matter. For most businesses right now, demand is soft, business could be better. Forget what the economists think about the macro-situation; let’s all worry about our own businesses and get them headed in the right direction.

What can we do to deal with the current environment that is, at best, apathetic and at worst, slowing from lethargic to near dead?

1.      Be confident. I’m not crazy and asking you to be confident in leadership or government. I am suggesting we all be confident in ourselves and in the value we each offer to our customers. That confidence is contagious and we could use a heavy dose of viral growth in the feel-good arena.

2.      Focus on success. Focusing on avoiding failure is much like trying not to lose—it almost certainly assures that you will. Look for ways to take advantage of the current market. Focus on positives and find the growth opportunities where you can.

3.      Celebrate wins. Don’t worry about the size of the wins, if you see some wins, call them out. Celebrate them. Get in the habit of winning. Constantly losing or underperforming tends to breed a culture or build a habit, even an expectation. Build an expectation of performance.

4.      Help your customers. First realize if your demand is not great, chances are your customers are hurting a little too. Can you help them solve some of their problems? That is what customer-focused companies do well.

5.      Co-create. Find ways to work together with your customers to identify the best way out of this bramble. There is no better time to innovate than now and no better partners than those you will be helping with your innovations.

6.      Partner with your best customers. Your best customers, those where the mutual value is the highest, are terrific sources of opportunity. If you are looking to grow your market share (after all, if the market is not growing you will have to take market share to grow), look first to grow your share of wallet within your best customers (those that view you as a partner.)

Double dip or not, there are ways for us to succeed in this soft economy. And guess what happens as one-by-one companies start to succeed? We dig ourselves out of this mess. Double dip? Maybe, maybe not. Long-term recession? It’s up to us.

As the NBA has just announced that all pre-season exhibition games are now cancelled, I wonder if they realize their customers drive their astronomical salaries and their ability to charge prices for seats like they were made of gold?

I don’t know all the details behind the negotiations and I refuse to even study them. Why? Because I simply don’t care about their issues. I’m the customer and I care that I won’t be seeing any games, sort of. Frankly, I care a whole lot less than I used to.

Let’s look at it as if the NBA were a business—rather, as if they ran it like a business.

1.      The product is lousy and customers have been telling them that for years now.

2.      While the average ticket price actually declined slightly the last two years, that follows almost 10 years of ticket price increases. And, although the average ticket price declined slightly last year, the average cost to take a family of four to a game is almost $300 and increased 1% from the prior year (that includes tickets, parking and food and drink). So ticket prices have not really declined.

3.      Employee/Owner relationships are so bad they cannot deliver their inferior product to their customers.

Why am I picking on the NBA, when the NFL went through the same process earlier this year? For one, I always felt the NFL would solve their issues and I don’t feel that way about the NBA. Second, there is simply more demand for the product the NFL offers.

I think the NBA needs a strong dose of customer focus. They need to understand what their customers want and deliver it. They need to think about their customers before taking actions that only serve to further alienate them. Because right now, they are cooking the proverbial goose that laid the golden egg.

The NBA needs to be run like a customer-focused business.

This might start to sound like another sports story and candidly, it involves a sports team, the Chicago Cubs. But it is not a story about baseball, it is a story about loyalty. And let me tell you, being a Cubs fan since I was nine years old through thick and thin (OK, OK, through thin and thin) requires a LOT of loyalty.

There are a few theories as to why so many are loyal to a team that has been so unsuccessful (the Cubs have not won the World Series in over 100 years). The most common theories are the Cubs are loveable losers or have benefitted from the early nationwide broadcasts of Cubs games by WGN TV. I just heard a new theory about the real driver of loyalty to the Cubs -- what really brings people to fill the stands whether they are in last place, next to last place or teasing us with conference leadership. The new theory supposes that people are not loyal to the team, they are loyal to the Friendly Confines, Wrigley Field.

I just returned from a three generation (my dad, my son, and me) trip to Wrigley, and as much as it hurts me to say so, I think this theory has legs. I have been to at least 30 top-level professional sports venues and never do I feel the way I feel when I walk out of the inner concourse and get my first glimpse of the green grass of the infield and celebrated ivy covering the outfield walls. My first trip to Wrigley Field was 40 years ago and there have been many since, yet I still get giddy just thinking about entering Major League Baseball’s second oldest stadium.

How is this related to loyalty? Well, the important question in this case is what drives loyalty? The Cubs team was recently purchased by the Ricketts family who will need to make many decisions about the future of the team. Wrigley Field is lacking in modern amenities for the players. Should they build a new stadium? Would that be meaningful in helping the Cubs win? What would it do to attendance? Would it change the experience that fans have enjoyed for so many years? What happens if fans really are loyal to the Wrigley Field experience and not to the team?

This is a pretty simple illustration of the shortcoming of minimal discussions with your customers. If you are going to reach out to your customers and ask them to take any time to answer questions, you had better make them count. They should help you make decisions, not post a number or keep a score. Simplicity is good but not if it leads to inaction or the wrong actions. There are no “silver bullets” in terms of understanding your customers. In order to make the right decisions in a customer-focused manner, your customer information must be predictive and prescriptive rather than short and simple.

One last caveat: I’m good with a new stadium if the Cubs would start winning World Series. But I really prefer them to win in good old Wrigley Field.

When we are faced with uncertain times, the most important decisions we must make are centered around resource allocation. It usually boils down to answering this 2-part question: Where should we continue to spend (maybe even increase spending) and where should we cut back?

Different companies take different approaches, some going as far as cutting programs and resources that they admit are necessary to grow and succeed once we emerge from the economic funk we are in.

Let me propose a customer-focused approach to making these decisions. A quick clarification first: customer-focused does not mean do whatever the customer wants for whatever they want to pay. We still have to balance the needs of our business and our shareholders with that of our customers. But an approach that considers the customer and recognizes that the best way to succeed is to help customers succeed is a customer-focused approach. Your customer listening programs should give you incredible help in these decisions.

The areas in which we should continue to invest and perhaps even increase resource levels during tough times are those areas that are valuable both internally and to customers. Innovation is one of these areas…our customers are looking for new solutions and we need new solutions to grow. Innovation benefits us both and should probably continue to get resources. Initiatives that help us to deliver more value to our customers and therefore continue to realize reliable revenue streams are mutually valuable and need continued investment.

By contrast, some areas are important or valuable to neither our customers nor our businesses. You cannot cut fast enough in these areas. (Blogger note to self: any example you give here is going to hack off someone because you will be calling their efforts low value. Be smart for once and don’t go there. Better yet, create some crazy example that no one would believe. Nah, don’t be lazy, think up a real life example that is a good one…). John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Systems didn’t just cut in a low value area, he turned a low-value resource eater into a mutually valuable one. Chambers dumped private plane travel (no value for the customer, very little if any value for the company, high convenience value for the traveler) in favor of more frequent communication via Cisco Telepresence, putting Cisco’s product line in plain view of strategic customers. Kudos to Chambers for true Customer Focused Leadership.

Spending that is high value to the customer but low value to the company should be maintained unless it is actually detrimental to the company. In other words, low value might be acceptable if it is important enough to customers, but no or negative value is not. Same goes for spending that is of high internal value but not that valuable for our customers; maintain these areas unless they are of negative value to your customers (there are many items of no value to our customers—quality control, forecasting, accounting, bureaucracy—but necessary for our business. These are ok to maintain as long as they don’t hamper customer success. ). (Blogger note to self: Yep, you just had to go there.) These areas are important. But from our customers’ point of view, they are not value-added. Take quality control. We must deliver quality products or services and need quality checking to make sure that happens. But, customers expect it done or produced right, there is no value to them in terms of how you get there.

This model only addresses resource allocation and not individual performance. We still must deal with performance issues and look to increase the competence of our teams. After all, those teams deliver the value to our customers.

Before you cut, consider how many degrees away from customer success you are cutting. Lowering the value you deliver will start a cycle that has only a bad ending. Focus on your customer, think about your business. Find the areas that neither of you need and redeploy those resources into areas that neither of you can do without.

On this tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2011, I am reminded to take nothing for granted. Before 9/11 I took for granted that I was safe every time I ascended one of the twin towers of the World Trade Center. I took for granted the safety of flying in airplanes (OK, I know there are risks, I just never thought that fellow passengers would pose them).

It’s easy to take things for granted, especially things that recur frequently.

In fact, some take customers for granted. Customers who repeat their purchases from you frequently may feel so true to you that you simply assume they will always be there. That is the first step in assuring they won’t.

As soon as we take relationships for granted, they start to wither. We start to do fewer of the small things that our customers really appreciate. We start to be a bit more focused on our results and not on the success of those customers. We start to put more resources serving new customers at the expense of those that have such regular frequent purchasers.

How about the assumption that frequent purchases indicates a customer’s loyalty to us? Perhaps they have no other choice. If they are taken for granted, the minute they have a choice they will become a lost customer.

Challenge the things you take for granted in your life. If you are true to yourself, the list should be a bit troubling. We can take way too many personal things for granted, things like family, shelter, jobs, friends, food, and safety. How about professionally? Are customers on your list?

Most companies work very hard to identify new prospects and convert them into new customers, and that is necessary to continue to grow. But it is far from the only way to grow and often times it is not the easiest way to grow. It may not even be the way to find the best opportunities.

It reminds me of a story Mark Twain told about a man who stumbled out of a bar and lost his keys. He was on his knees under a streetlamp when a policeman approached and asked what he was doing. He replied, “Looking for my keys.” The policeman asked where he had lost them and pointing he said, “Over there in that alley.” When the officer asked why he was looking for them here, he replied, “Because this is where the light is.”

Many of our best opportunities exist within our customer base. Consider these challenges…

1.      Do you treat each customer like they are your only customer? While all customers are not created equally, all customers that you want to keep should be receiving your best stuff. If they are not, there exists opportunities to provide them more value and grow your revenue.

2.      Are you providing your customers with solutions to meet their needs, or are you focused on selling them what you have to sell? This is one of the biggest mistakes we can make. If you think you can “trick” customers into buying what you want to sell them, it’s going to be a long haul. On the other hand, helping your customers to succeed is a value proposition that sells.

3.      Are you listening to your customers to find opportunities? When we get into the mode of “I know what they want,” your relationship is destined to be short-lived. A partnering relationship is based more on the “How can I help you with that?” mode. If you have a customer listening or voice of the customer program in place, it should be designed to help you identify opportunities as well as issues.

Especially in these challenging economic times, focusing on your existing customers is a terrific way to grow your business and build lasting relationships.

These are definitely uncertain times. Your customers are uncertain about their business and that translates into cautionary behavior—lower spending. At best that means price pressure for your business; at worst, it means lower demand. And it doesn’t look like this is ending any time soon.

We can just throw up our arms and resign ourselves to letting lower demand and price pressure negatively impact our revenue, or we can find ways to bring some stability into this unpredictable environment. Here are three things that will add stability to your business:

1.      Focus on solidifying relationships with your existing customers. The best way to keep a bucket full of water, is to plug all the holes. You can try to put more water into the bucket, but without plugging the holes, you won’t get anywhere. Same goes for customers. Rarely can you sell your way out of a customer retention problem. Build stronger relationships with the customers you have and lock them in.

2.      Understand how your customers view you and make changes so they view you the way you view you. From the “Truth Hurts” files: We are rarely objective about ourselves or our businesses. Our own view is frequently much more attractive than the view our customers have. Really understand how they feel, how they view you and make the corrections necessary so they see the partner they cannot do without.

3.      Articulate the value of your offerings around the challenges your customers are encountering. Helping your customers solve their problems is much more important than making sure they are buying what you are selling. Way too often, we focus on what we think is important about our offerings, not what our customers need from our offerings. Solve their problems, solve your own.

There are probably many other ways to add some stability during economically challenging times. Getting closer to your customers must be at the top of the list.

The unthinkable has happened. The credit of the United States has been downgraded from the highest rating of AAA to AA+. This, of course, is not good, and it will put more pressure on all businesses as interest rates and general uncertainty rise. This also will likely create more government intervention, which generally tends to do more harm than good…our system operates based on natural balances that occur in a free market system. Government intervention, while always well intentioned and sometime theoretically sound, throws that balance off. And if this entry feels like déjà vu, you’re right…check out my blog entry a couple years ago titled, “Is the World Really Ending?”

So how does this crisis affect our customer relationships? Our relationships will be impacted in at least one way, two ways if we are customer focused.

First, our relationships with customers will be impacted by ways in which they act differently. Times like these make people more cautious, less likely to spend as freely, more likely to demand higher value and returns for the money they do spend. Procurement becomes more powerful which drives value out of proposed offerings. These dynamics put real pressure on customer relationships.

There is not much we can do to change their behavior. It is a natural reaction to uncertain times like these. However, there is much we can do about our own behavior and how we react to this new or exaggerated dynamic.

1.      Recognize that your customer is struggling and use your offerings to help them solve their problems. Not only is that the right thing to do, but it is also a clear demonstration of value. And when you can help them solve their problems, they will be much more likely to spend with you.

2.      Continue your efforts to really understand your customers so that you are in a position to add the value they are looking for. If you have a good customer experience effort underway, expand it. If you don’t, start one. It may seem counter to spend more, or there may be pressures to cut costs, but if there is one area that calls for more efforts during times like these, customer listening would be the area.

3.      Ramp up your efforts to build a real relationship…not a vendor/customer relationship, but a real partnership. Even if your customer is not currently in a position to purchase more from you, this effort will be time well spent. They will understand that you are in it for the long haul and not ignoring them while times are tough.

4.      Understand their situation and, if possible without harming your business, be responsive to it. Can you adjust your offering to address only their most pressing needs and reduce the price accordingly? Can you do that in a way that still allows you to be profitable and maintain a good relationship with them?

5.      Call on your good relationships to help you work with their procurement processes. With good relationships you have invested in over time, you may have built enough equity to get their assistance—chances are they are only slightly less annoyed with their procurement department than you are.

Yes, some of these may require resources during a time that companies want to cut costs and that might be tough. But your customers are worth fighting for. Customers are the only way out of this morass. Until customers are willing to spend more, growth will be somewhat elusive. We must invest in our customers and provide them the return they need to be successful. That, and only that, will drive your success too.

Thanks to a friend of mine whose company (Language Training Center) teaches LPGA golfers language and culture skills, I recently played in an LPGA Pro-Am. Here’s the deal—four amateurs play with one of the professionals in a scramble format. You can guess which of the five consistently hit the pure shot.

This Pro-Am occurs one day before the tournament starts, one day before the ladies spend four days of intense competition. So why do they engage in these events? Surely watching us amateurs has to create some negative swing thoughts for the pros. Surely they have better things to do than chase us around the course.

They do it because they are connecting with their customers. What drives the purses for the LPGA? The fans, viewers, customers for advertisers and sponsors. Connecting with customers, even 4 at a time, is a great way to develop relationships that pay off.

I played with a professional name In-Kyung Kim. She goes by I.K., at least here in the USA. Before the Pro-Am, I knew nothing about I.K. even though she is currently ranked 6^th in the world! Now, after spending 5 hours walking 18 holes with her I am a huge fan. I will be following her in every tournament. If I.K. is on the leaderboard, I will be watching the tournament. The LPGA just increased their viewership. I.K. just increased her fan base (Her golf swing is beautifully smooth, accurate and consistent, her personality is warm, friendly and unassuming and she was patient with our hooks, slices, dribbles and shanks. In short, she is a winner.)

Connecting with customers pays off and professional golf has figured that out. Our customers need to see our personalities. They need to see us at work. We need to connect with them in a way that makes them fans.

Time to go…I need to tune into the LPGA and see how I.K. is scoring.

One of my mentors always said that you can learn a lot about a person’s character over the course of 18 holes of golf. Lately, I have learned a few other things from golf that translate into the business world.

A few weeks ago I found myself in Georgia at the Augusta National Golf Club watching a practice round before the Masters tournament. I have watched the Masters on television every year for as long as I can remember. On television, the course looks amazing. From the dogwoods and azaleas that are always blooming at the right time to the greenest and perfectly manicured fairways, Augusta appears to be perfect.

So as we parked our car and started walking towards the grounds, I started to wonder, “Are my expectations too high? Will I be disappointed because reality cannot possibility meet my expectations?” I was just about to get a big dose of what I am now calling the “Augusta Experience.”

Augusta National blew me away. Even with my sky high expectations, it simply blew me away. What I witnessed was perfection. And very customer focused. Here are a few things that contributed to my experience:

1.      An apparent lack of greed exists at this event. I bought one of the famous Pimiento Cheese sandwiches (had to do it, had to experience it!) for the whopping price tag of $1.50. They realize there is no need to gouge the patrons (there are no customers at Augusta, just patrons), because the experience is so great that patrons will keep coming back for more. More of the golf course, more souvenirs, more pimiento cheese sandwiches.

2.      The main product, the main attraction, is the golf course itself and the history that is part of its make-up. Bobby Jones, Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and many others have created history on this course. But in this case, the canvas might be more important than the paint and the artists. The course is hard to describe using any word other than…perfect. It is beautiful with strategically planted trees (for which each hole is named) and flowers. The grass (Bermuda, overseeded each fall with rye) is thicker and greener than any other course. There is no trash anywhere. Even leaves and pine cones that drop from trees are quickly scooped up by the grounds crew. It is a great product with a well-deserved reputation.

3.      The patrons form a community. Any given day of practice of the tournament there will be somewhere between 35,000 and 50,000 patrons on the course. Yet, if you place your chair in a spot you like and wander away for a while (even a long while, even the rest of the day), when you return, your chair will be there waiting for you. No exceptions. The patrons respect each other because they know they are all there to witness the best golfers in the world playing one of the best golf courses in the world.

4.      Augusta National is a patron-friendly experience. Yes, there are rules. Actually, there are many rules and they are enforced. But the little things that together make up the experience are all done to ensure that each patron walks away having had an incomparable day.

So here is the challenge that August National presents for the rest of us. Would your patrons, your customers, say their expectations of you are very high and you consistently blow them away? That is what I have started to call the Augusta Experience. It may be a lofty goal, but just think how loyal your patrons would be if you were to achieve it.

While the stock markets appear to be somewhat stagnant, the Walker Index has continued to climb, reaching an all-time high.

The Walker Index is a hypothetical stock index comprised of Walker clients. The Walker Index is a decent proxy for an index of customer-focused companies, companies that really want to use the voice of the customer as an important management lever.

Over the past 10 years, the Walker Index has generated a compounded annual growth rate of 11.52% compared to just 0.88% for the S&P 500. Why the difference? There are probably many reasons, but here is a couple to consider:

1.      Focus on Outcomes. Companies in the Walker Index listen to their customers with the appropriate outcomes in mind. These companies are focused on driving success for their customers because they know that will result in the right outcomes for them as well. Help your customers, help yourself. Many companies in the S&P 500 are focused on keeping score, not on taking the right actions to drive results.

2.      Customer Choices. You’ve probably heard this more than you care to, in part due to a dramatic lack of sincerity, “We know you have a choice of airlines when you travel and we thank you for choosing us.” But customers do have a choice, even if that choice is doing nothing. When the economy is sputtering (and it still is), customers get choosier. Companies that are focused on helping customers meet their challenges will more likely win over those focused on making a customer a “promoter” or improving some other score for the sake of the score.

There are many lessons to be learned from the Walker Index, but none is more important than learning to listen to your customers for the right reason—to create world class outcomes for your customers and your company.