Nobody is Buying Now!
Nobody’s buying what you’re selling? It’s time to sell what they need. You probably already do, but in times like these you need to fine-tune your product to bring them into the picture. It’s simple, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy.
Jack Ma, CEO of Alibaba, is the grandmaster of understanding what people will buy. Famously, he said: “Forget about your competitors, just focus on your customers.” In the same way, it’s time to forget your products, and to think about what your customers need. In a good business, those 2 points are very close together, but confusing the two is the difference between selling and not selling.
All of the real estate leasing brokers and tenant reps that we know are very concerned for their business. Some have even said the year is over before it’s even begun. Unless companies are in the advanced stages of signing an office lease, they have much more urgent priorities—and even if they are, they might be trying to change direction.
We don’t have the silver bullet for making office leases more important to tenants than COVID-19. But circumstances like these teach us that if we really want to serve our customers, we need to start by understanding their needs, and then designing solutions that serve those needs in a way that brings value. Until then, nothing will be sold.
So it’s important to start with humble honesty.
Healthcare providers are at the center of the storm right now. We caught up with our longtime friend and collaborator who heads the healthcare and population health practice for a leading US management consulting firm.
“I actually don’t know what your clients really need right now, but based on my health systems clients, I can guess that they are looking for some version of sanity and assurance of revenue. But guessing is dangerous because it comes from me, not my clients.”
“Hospitals are trying to find what they can do to handle the panic. An aggregated data hub is the technical concept some suppliers are selling to bring that sense of control where they can direct their patients to where they want the patients to go, rather than have the patient exercise self-directed choice, since the patient really doesn’t know best in this case. This is not to be confused with understanding the customer: this is a stage where the expert needs to advise, but first the patient (client) must consent to following that expertise.”
“Another care provider client didn’t choose to allocate the budget for a system called value-based care. I and other consultants have been warning them: wait until an economic downturn and then you’ll wish you value-based care, which is a model where the hospital gets assured revenue each month in the form of a percentage of premium.”
“Right now all my clients wish they had assured revenue with no expenses because patients don’t want to come for treatment now unless they really need to [be treated].”
“So control and assurance of revenue is what clients really need right now. Ironically this isn’t far from what I was already selling them, but the acuteness of the current situation has brought about the compelling need to have that right now.”
“In some ways the time has come to catch up, to do what they should’ve been doing all along. In some ways I was selling ahead of their needs. Visionary clients bought that during good times and desperate clients are buying that now.”
“But that’s my responsibility and I am no different from my clients. I find myself much the subject of my own human errors, not doing what I should be doing when I should be doing it. And at times when I fall on my face I don’t want someone rubbing my nose in it. I’d want them to have compassion. I actually did that with a client and offered them free help which led to more business today.
“I think showing grace in a time of need and pain is actually common sense but not common practice.”
Easier said than done, and well-said.
These are some of the lessons we’re learning from COVID19:
To meet the needs of our customers, practice empathy, truly seeking to understand
Set aside our solutions, to stop selling what makes us money
Creatively think of how to apply our expertise on their behalf: we can help them do things they can’t do for themselves, and that can really make a difference for them
Stay humble and also gentle with ourselves for our past stumbles
Consider changing how we do business in the future, in good times and bad. Nobody wants the extra work of reinventing their business in challenging times, but if we want to serve the market, and to grow and prosper ourselves, we need to listen when the teacher provides a lesson.