Just Be The Ball, Be The Ball, Be The Ball (from Caddy Shack)

Just know your customer, know your customer, know your customer. Trite but true. The hard work comes in what you do about this. Is it an annual survey or do leading companies go a bit further?

I had the pleasure on Thursday of spending time with Michael Costuros and Andy Patrick of LiveBooks. These guys are building a great business helping professional photographers market their work on the web. Michael made the point that photography is deeply ingrained in their company's DNA, that most of their people are hobbiest and that in particular, their sales force comes entirely from the ranks of professional photographers.

I've just wrapped up a couple years working with Instill - the leading provider of spend intelligence to the food services industry. The solution involved translating billing data into a standard format for analysis. While the technology did a fantastic job of this, exceptions still required manual handling which meant recruiting folks directly from the food industry into technology jobs. Over the years, many of these folks at Instill had grown into mid and senior level positions in the company, with their food industry experience being a key factor in their success with the customer.

As a competitive sailer, I'm often spending time looking at gear (too much time my wife would say). My favorite location, Svendson Boat Yard has a good selection but goes well beyond this by staffing the store with folks that actually know their stuff. West Marine also used to do this though less so as their sales continue to decline (this rather obvious chicken or egg problem is left as an exercise for the student).

Just know your customer, know your customer, know your customer.

In all three examples, these leaders in very diverse industries understand that to serve, you need to first understand. They have gone well beyond the typical board room rhetoric and integrated an ability to know and serve their customer deeply into the DNA of their business. This is giving them a level of competitive advantage that is both powerful and highly defensible. The quality of your relationship with the customer has far more to do with winning and losing over the long term than other any single factor. It shows up in customer loyalty (net recommender scores), reduced churn and more repeat business. In the simplest terms, it makes you the company that customers want to do business with - which end the end, is competitive advantage define.