The Customer Is Always Right

Recently, I had the pleasure of spending part of a day on site with one of my favorite customers. John is in the gun business, a market currently experiencing a definite boom -- pun intended.

We were tackling a specific challenge: how to leverage his company’s greatest physical asset, its sales and service department, in today’s digital marketplace. John’s been in firearms a long time: his family's business has been in the same location for 62 years.

During the past few months we have made strides forward with John’s business. We’ve refreshed the network, worked with an integrated point-of-sale (PoS) system, created a Facebook business page, updated two Websites, upgraded to existing vendors’ latest online tools, and so forth.

As a professional integrator and consultant, I counted all these steps as significant gains. But John corrected me that day. You see, my client does business the old-fashioned way, face to face. He takes every customer’s needs to heart, leaning on years of experience to satisfy his clients.

The path to sale has not changed, but the landscape has. You still must serve clients, first and foremost. And that’s the end of the story.

How, then, will we help John and his team meet this challenge? How can we help him meet customers’ face-to-face needs while simultaneously reaching out to other clients virtually?

Our plan is simple and straightforward. The gunsmith will stock his online store with low-cost, high-need items such as cleaning kits, ammunition, and targets -- goods with a short returning sales cycle. The store will post pictures of new, big-ticket sales to the Facebook page, allowing for a social networking win. Events such as gun safety courses will be organized online, allowing for a younger generation to use their tools to book slots in the available courseware.

Despite all the technical hurdles we needed to meet, my team still had to do business the old-fashioned way: listen to the client, craft a solution, and implement the next phase of the project. I guess business does not change, and the client should always be right -- the first time.

When dealing with all of today’s new technical tools, do not lose sight of the win/win that always exists in the SMB. Treat your customer right, provide quality service and products, and then scream about it online! Not the other way around.