Tony’s strategy revolves around the underlying needs of his customer base. That he has targeted customers who have baser needs than most is irrelevant from a strategic perspective. Tony takes the time to meet and talk with his customers as well as to talk to his people about their interaction with customers. This is Tony’s version of focus groups and customer research. He pays acute attention to subtle shifts in customer requirements, always trying to stay one step ahead of the competition to remain on top. He searches for unmet customer needs, and when he finds them, he’s quick to launch a strategy to capitalize. The customer focus that’s key to total quality/process improvement/customer-centric initiatives would make perfect sense to Tony.
TONY ON MEETING KEY CUSTOMER NEEDS
"Garbage is our bread and butter."
For instance, Tony astutely analyzed the market of immigrants and determined that an unmet need was lower phone rates so they could call their families in the old country more frequently. As a result, he launched a telephone card scam that targeted immigrants in the New York City area. Similarly, Tony recognized that a market existed for designer label clothes that "fell off the truck." He saw an unmet need for designer labels among a certain amoral segment of the marketplace and again quickly capitalized on it. Tony pounces on markets where customers are highly motivated to buy, and this underlying strategic principle often results in fast and furious sales.
To develop this customer motivation focus, consider adopting the following tactics.
Look at familiar markets in unfamiliar ways. Certainly, Tony wasn’t the first person to target immigrant and designer-label markets. Tony, though, viewed these markets from a different perspective. Like a good niche marketer, he avoided the saturated segments and concentrated on underserved segments. Instead of viewing your market head-on, rotate it in your mind so you’re viewing it from a fresh vantage point. This means avoiding the mainstream customer approach and instead searching for what a smaller segment of the market needs but isn’t getting. If everyone is selling on price to a given group, for instance, perhaps it means you need to meet that segment’s desire for quality.
Get to know your customers on a first-name basis. People have always talked about the need to know their customers better, but it’s still relatively rare for senior executives to spend significant amounts of time interacting with current and prospective customers. This means spending time in stores and online, asking questions of people and answering their questions. It means going beyond sitting in on a focus-group session. These are fine, but you must engage in customer dialogues if you want to come up with the type of strategies for handling unmet customer needs that Tony is so skilled at devising. Tony isn’t afraid to ask customers for feedback or ask them the tough questions; he really wants to know what’s on their minds. Knowing your customers on a first-name basis means knowing what’s going on in their heads and not just what’s taking place in their businesses.
Be observant. Tony sees all, knows all. At least that’s how it appears. He is constantly studying situations and people, watching for entry points, for an edge. Too many leaders acquire the vast majority of their information secondhand. By being constantly vigilant and paying attention to everything that takes place around you, you can gain access to firsthand data.