The Customer Isn’t King; You Are!

According to the gospel from the Book of Marketing, “The customer is King.” This long-held sentiment posits that you MUST pay attention to the customer if you’re to succeed. Hang on to his every word. Latch on to his every clue. And if he gives you shit, take it!

Despite the rampant nature of this thinking, though, 90% of startups failed in 2019. Like every other year.

To succeed, you must turn the tide. Stop hunting customers. Instead, make them grovel at your feet begging for your next release. How can you achieve that?

Consider three tried and tested methods to turn your product from servant to King and have every customer begging to serve.

1. You determine the product

Marketing gurus often tell you to “listen to the market” when creating a product. This advice assumes the customer knows what he wants. He doesn’t. The customer only knows as much as he can see.

Your duty as an entrepreneur is to widen their scope of vision. The most disruptive products solve problems the customer didn’t know he had. These products create demand out of nothing instead of chasing existing demand.

2. You choose your customers

Customers do not choose you. You choose them. Perhaps the greatest modern example of this trend is the iPhone brand. Despite being “obscenely expensive”, there are still those who consider it cheap. These are their target customers.

Put simply, the customer has no say in the products they buy. A good product markets itself. It makes you stand in line, waiting to get your fill, without caring how much it costs.

When you create the right product, you get to cherry-pick your desired customer.

3. Customer retention is all about you

The average customer is powerless, mindless even. Rather than set the tone for your business, they only ever react to you. They need you to tell them whether to like you or not.

Customer retention, therefore, is all about the actions YOU choose to take. When you deliver value to the customer, you leave the customer no choice but to stick with your brand.

Think Google which everyone claims to hate. Still, because Google remains agile, providing important solutions at scale, it is the fifth-largest brand by market cap in the world.

Leave the Customer to Us

Steve Jobs, who hated the word ‘marketing’, rose to become the greatest entrepreneur of his time by focusing on product development. You should too. Jobs, though, still had a marketing department tasked with getting his product to the end-users.

Our innovative products at Salesforce are designed to make the work of your sales/marketing team that much easier. While you focus on developing the product that rules the market, we help you build relations with your desired customer.

We provide you with a range of time-tested products to ensure you engage your customers right, sell smarter, and grow faster.

Learn more about how Salesforce transforms customer relationships.