Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Who is your customer?

I sat through a meeting today, with a potential new client who had asked that I sit in on a 'future resource needs' planning session, and for me to learn their business.

The attendees consisted of Senior Managers, Project Leaders, Human Resource Specialists, The Controller and yours truly...it became very obvious to me that each person viewed and approached the meeting with a 'this is only about me' attitude. Eash person only wanted to input on how it would affect (or is it effect!? not sure so will go with affect)...them and their work load. After about 1 hour, a question was possed by the VP of strategic Planning...'Who are we doing this Resource planning for? You could have heard a pin drop...stunned silence comes to mind, with completely blank looks, even looks of sheer panic and horror on several faces...

After what must have seemed like an eternity to some, but was only 15 seconds in reality, the VP answered his own question...'Our Customers!'

With that laid out on the table he then asked each person present to say, in the context on the meeting subject, how they were going to help 'the customers'. By the VP reminding everyone that the customer is the most important focus, all roadblocks and any resistance were removed and only good positive input was forthcoming for the rest of the meeting.

Lesson #1, remove any barriers early in a meeting, clearly define who your target audience is, and what your expected outcomes are...by doing this, you will prevent a meeting that should only take 40-50 minutes turning into a 2 hour mind numbing, non achieving meeting.

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