Customer Love vs. Competitor War
by Miki Saxon
Who do you channel? Sun Tzu or Lao Tzo?
I’ve cited Lao Tzu multiple times over the years, but, unlike most management gurus, not Sun Tzu’s Art of War.
I never liked battle analogies; never understood the idea of “killing the competition.” In spite of what I was told was my naiveté, it seemed to me that loving the customer was more important.
While those battle terms are still around, it seems like I was on to something way back then.
According to Frank Cespedes, Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School and author of Aligning Strategy and Sales those fighting words get the focus wrong.
Strategy gurus constantly use analogies with battle plans for “competitive advantage” versus the enemy. But the metaphor is not suitable because business, unlike a war or battle, is not primarily about defeating an enemy. Business is primarily about customer value: targeting customer groups and tailoring products, sales and other activities to serve those groups better or differently than others. (…) Peter Drucker emphasized, “The purpose of a business is to create a customer.” That’s also the purpose of any business strategy: make customers, not war.
Winning customers is actually pretty simple, delight them, amaze them and provide them with something they either need or want.
Do all that and the competition will fade away in the eyes of your customers.
And theirs are the only eyes that matter.
Image credit: Kevin Wong
