Weekly Tip: Trend Spotting

Part of your job in helping customers is to be their source of reconnaissance in the marketplace. Customers need more than just your products…they need your insights and recommendations. You are an extra set of eyes, ears and brains for your customers and they need you to help them understand the future…their future.

If you can bring your customers information on their business you increase your value. What they want to know is:

• Best Practices – What are the gold-standards they need to emulate or that they have and they need to communicate.
• New Technology – What are the changes in technology that are impacting their position with competitors and their own customers.
• Regulation impacts – Regulations only increase, never decrease. There are so many and they are always changing. You can keep your customer up to date and what the impacts are.

If you only talk about your offering and their business in current terms, you risk being moved out of a strategic adviser position and into a transaction processor…one step closer to the door.