I have a question: Does your customer even care about time?

We all know the old adage: time is money. But is it really? Do our customers think that time and money are the same thing – or are they two different things in their eyes?

Imagine you have a product targeted to administrative assistants. Your tool can save them ten hours per week on one of their more mundane data management tasks.

You call on a prospective customer who has an administrative assistant. The assistant greets walk-in clients and answers phones during office hours – but he is also responsible for managing client files.

You present your product to the customer, demonstrating its features and explaining the significant administrative time that can be saved with its use. You’re shocked when your message fails to inspire the expected excitement. There is no sale.

What happened? Why didn’t the customer see the benefit of the product? Has this happened to you?

Ashley Reddy, of Rational Robotics, brought this example forward for discussion at one of our group meetings. As a veteran entrepreneur, he pointed out that sometimes what we think of  as a major benefit of our product may be the exact opposite to our customers – and in particular, time and money are different things.

In the example, the assistant could not work fewer hours to save money because the job included greeting clients in person and on the phone. As long as the data work was being handled between customers, there was no incentive to incur additional costs for new software. Time saving was not valued by this customer.

When we’re learning about our customers it’s important to know – not guess – what matters to them. Our sample customer might have been interested if the product could reduce errors, which did cost them thousands of dollars per year in rework.

So what did I learn?

Don’t guess – talk to the customers. Create and position the product to address major customer concerns. Don’t assume I know how they think. Test my assumptions.

Until tomorrow, GUNG Ho friends!

Thanks Ashley. Your insights and broad experience are a valuable addition to our group discussions.