Tough customers make good business coaches

If you wanted to list the two major contributors to spurring on innovation, it would be tough competition and demanding customers. While we often acknowledge the former, we give little credit to the latter.  

It is the hard-won customer that we have to fight for, demonstrating better functionality and features in our products are part of the battle. Once won, the tough customer also keeps us up to the mark, demanding a high quality of after sales service.

When your product has expired or your service delivery is completed, they will then expect you to step up again and win the next order – nothing is taken for granted. There are no free lunches with these customers.

We often forget that those customers who are leaders in their own sectors only achieved that position by being the best in their industry. What they demand of us is no less than what they demand of themselves.

They wouldn’t retain their leadership position by allowing their own suppliers to let them down, so they need the best suppliers they can find. We can expect them to ask us for the latest innovation and the highest quality of service because they need us to step up to our best so that they can do the same. To ask less of us would be to compromise their own strategy.

We can look at this as a problem, or see it as an opportunity.

A customer who is willing to try out new things, work with us on new functionality or on solving difficult problems is worth cultivating. When they confront us with new situations that require innovative solutions, they are pushing us to be creative, to go the extra mile and to break with conventional solutions.

We can go along for the ride and challenge ourselves, push the boundaries and see what we can do, or we can give in and be a follower, content to watch others succeed where we couldn’t.

Those companies that innovate, discover new solutions to old problems or make breakthroughs in reducing cost, or expanding performance, establish leadership positions that allow them to command higher prices.

Their higher margins allow them to fund greater amounts of research and development thus building ever higher competitive barriers to their less well off competitors. Being pushed by the toughest customers creates a tension inside a supplier organisation, which then seeks innovative solutions to be the supplier of choice.

Tough customers are good for business.

If you want to be really pro-active, you would seek out the toughest customers in your sector to find out what problems they have where they don’t have acceptable solutions.

Can you build or deliver something that can win you some business with them? What would you need to do to become a supplier of choice?

If you can gain a foothold, you can use this position to work with them on new products and then use this to leverage up your competitive advantage.