"You can teach a hacker business, but you can't make him or her get excited about it, which means it may not get the time or attention it deserves."
-- Ben Brinckerhoff, co-founder of now defunct Devver.net

Build Customers, Not Just Products

Or tactics, or strategy, or whatever...

How often do you see the marketing department blamed for a company that has fallen on hard times or for the closure of a tech startup? Rarely, if ever, is my assessment. Save for notable blunders like New Coke, or KFC underestimating the popularity of Oprah, marketing rarely takes center stage on the front page of the local business section.

Two articles from this past weekend, one about a company that we’ve all heard of, Harley-Davidson, and another about a startup that you’ve likely never heard of, Devver.net (maker of coding tools for software developers) converge nicely on the central issue of customer development over product development and the importance of NEVER taking your eye off of the ball.

The two cases are actually very different, in that Harley is calling for wage concessions, among other things, to keep their facilities in Wisconsin. I’m sure that there’s some part of their overall basket of issues that includes labor, but seriously, when your core customer base is aging boomers (no offense), isn’t the writing on the wall, and shouldn’t customer development be at the top of your list? I feel they they’re not addressing the right problem here.

Devver is a bit more enlightened in that they realized, albeit in hindsight, that their issue was a lack of long term customer development focus. They say, and I quote:

"Our mistake at that point was to go 'heads down' and focus on building the accelerator while minimizing our contact with users and customers (after all, we knew how great it was and time spent talking to customers was time we could be hacking!)," writes Brinckerhoff. "We should have [been] asking, 'Is there an even simpler version of this product that we can deliver sooner to learn more about pricing, market size, and technical challenges?'."

I’m not advocating the marketers take the blame for anything, or that we shirk responsibility either. If we believe Peter Drucker when he said “The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer,” then it seems logical that our focus should not be on the tactics, technology, labor or anything else that doesn’t support customer development.

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Q&A | QUESTIONS & ACTIONS

Take a step back today and ask “what am I focused on”?
Where is my company putting its energy (and where am I putting mine)?
Am I rolling with what’s in the news or am I relentlessly focused on customer development?

PLANNING AHEAD?

Each week, we look at what’s coming up a month from now in Chase’s 2010 Calendar of Events to help you plan your promotions in advance.

May 21 is National Bike to Work Day – Pretty self-explanatory. How about holding a contest in your office for the department that has the highest percentage of team members riding into work…or just make a difference on your own by hopping on your bike!

 

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