Listening and Refining your Offering
If you have ever read about how successful companies got started, they all have some aspects in common. One of them is that it takes perseverance and patience. In my first blog post on starting up a business, I recounted how I laid the foundation for my company by clearing defining my offering, my target audience, my plan for reaching my audience and converting them to customers. This post recaps how I got through that long slog from startup to a sustainable business by…
Listening to my customers
Refining my offering
1. Really listen to your customers.
As I started getting a few precious customers, I knew that I needed to understand their thinking process so I could align my service offerings to their business needs.
My core service is market research, particularly the data that can be pulled from the Federal Procurement Data System about past government purchases. Now I am a bit of a data geek, and I had fun swimming around in all these data about things the government buys. I loved to find trends and develop illustrations of how the government buys stuff that my clients sell. I loved doing this so much, that I was willing to set my billing rate for this work way below market just to get experience with live clients.
When I presented my research reports, I listened carefully to their reactions and noted what seemed most interesting to them, and did not. For the latter, I wondered if I had not done an adequate job of explaining a certain finding’s utility or was it because they didn’t really care about that data point? I enjoyed producing these charts and tables showing how an agency was using contracting vehicles, set-asides and different mechanisms to buy services. But I discovered that their interest was in finding proposal opportunities. They wanted me to cut to the chase— what RFPs are coming up that I can bid on! I was not connecting the dots between researching, preparing, bidding and winning.
In most cases, I had been in government contracting a lot longer than my customers and I had a good grasp of what it takes to win contracts. Should I give them what they want and spit out a pipeline of opportunities with no context? Over time I developed the confidence to explain to customers that while writing proposals is a part of the process and there is a great deal more involved with winning. What a company does before the RFP is released is critical to making sure you win more frequently. I loved teachable moments when I presented data that on its face seemed either irrelevant or arcane, but in reality was critical.
2. It is OK to refine the offering.
With listening comes responding to what we hear. With every engagement, I found myself trying new things to get better at meeting my customer’s needs.
I changed the questions I’d ask at the kick-off meeting. I would make sure the customer and I had the same expectations about the process and deliverables of the engagement before we started work.
I tweaked my form agreement letters over and over -- not so much to protect myself from litigation, but to make sure there was a mutual understanding of what the customer would get and not get for their money. To get repeat business, I knew I had to meet or beat expectations.
I clarified a few key offerings and described them in detail on my website. I wrote a Capabilities Statement. I dropped some other offerings that were attracting little interest.
I adjusted the way I interacted with customers. Check-in meetings once a week? Every two weeks? I presented interim reports halfway through through the engagement to make sure I was going in the desired direction before I reached the limit of my hours, only to deliver a report that was off-track.
There is a big difference between refining and abandoning a strategy. It is important to trust the vision you had from the start. That doesn’t mean everything’s going to be dandy all the time –it means only that it takes time to get every aspect of the business right and then to get word of the great work you do out to paying customers.
Even though I had a few bad months and I was not meeting the revenue projections I set at the beginning, that was not the fault of my overall strategy. In my case, it simply meant that I needed to give it more time to come to fruition. I did not have the business volume I wanted because I did not yet have the visibility to get enough prospects, and I did not have the right pitch to close enough deals. In other situations, it might be that the original plan was off because of a faulty market assessment or failing to connect the offering solidly with client needs.
In summary, a successful business is built on a 3-legged stool of owner passion and energy, connected to a real market need, and marketed effectively to the buyers. Compromise on any of these, and the stool falls apart and you land with a heckuva bang!
My passion for my work led to innovative offerings, under-promising with over-delivery and quality work -- all of which refined and grew my ability to satisfy customers and grow. It’s a process and a learning curve. I hope I’ve helped you along with both today.
In my next post I will talk about the perils of pricing. What is the right price point for your offering.