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My brother is a magician, literally, so saying that I don't believe in
magic is an understatement. I know how the stuff works, well some of it, anyway.
It's clever, but it's not changing reality.
Customer relationships cause even the best companies to try magic once in a
while. There was a great IBM commercial a few years ago about a company that had
horrible customer service because none of their customer systems talked to each
other. The senior team wanted a rock group to come up with a new anthem to
improve the customer's experience. Even the rockers had to laugh. Companies
have as much likelihood of changing their relationship with the customer
through magic like this as I have of levitating.
The chasm between the business and the customer exists because they see the
same reality from different points of view, like in the photo below. Apart
from its inherent beauty, it points up how the world changes as we change
perspective.
How do we move closer, as a company, to our customer's point of view? There
are a lot of intelligent people around, but intelligence alone is not going to
give you the customer's point of view. Likewise, the world is full of creative
people, but the imagination alone cannot take us to the customer's vantage
point. We have this challenge in every NetSuite implementation that we do. It's
not like you one day figure out the customer's perspective. Each customer is
unique and the process of understanding them is what make business so damn
exhilarating.
The customer, however, is more than willing to invite us too see the world
from his perspective. For this collaboration we ought to bring all of our
intelligence and imagination, plus a large portion of trust. We have to be
willing to say and believe that the customer has a useful, interesting,
worthwhile point of view that's worth understanding.
How many people today are looking for a CRM software solution? I will
venture a guess, based on internet search statistics of close to a million a
month just on the term CRM, that there are close to 100,000 small, medium and
large companies that are actively looking for a CRM solution. Yet how many of
these companies are looking for the CRM that is going to benefit their customers
the most?
I talk to prospects every day about CRM and I purposefully embed the
prospect's customer's point of view in the conversation. Frankly,
prospects have asked me about everything, from the financial records of
NetSuite, to the pedigree of SightLines Consulting. Only a handful have ever
asked about how the CRM solution benefits their customers. Take another look at
the Great Lakes from the Space Shuttle and ask yourself "If I roll out a new
CRM, how will I explain its value to my customers?" That's CRM assessment from
an entirely different perpective. And a good start to moving your company
closer to the customer's point of view. | 
