Intro:

Hey friend, and welcome to the Trend Report. I'm glad you're joining me today for another installment of our 10 to win series. I really appreciate all the feedback you guys have been giving me about these short, quick episodes and I'm glad to be able to bring them to you. So, got any ideas about topics in the future, please reach Sid Meadows. And I'm a business leader, a coach and a consultant and, most importantly, a longtime student of the office furniture industry. I like to have powerful conversations with industry leaders and innovators and others that are making an impact in their business and in our industry and, as you know, my goal is really really simple to provide you with valuable insights and information and maybe some resources and some thought provoking conversations that might help you grow and your business grow. So today we're going to talk about the three C's of business research why understanding your customers, your competitors and your colleagues is critical to your success.

Sid: 

Now I remember it like it was yesterday, but it was over 20 years ago. I was sitting at the conference table with the company's leadership and several representatives from the customer we were meeting so that they could share with us why we had been awarded their project. This was a first for me, and I was really excited to learn why we won. I was anticipating they'd say things like you are the low price, you have the better products. Your overall package fit our needs best. Right, that's what all salespeople want to hear. However, what they shared with me really made me take a step back. I was like, whoa, could this really be the driver in why we were successful? You see, this project started when a bid landed on my desk and as I looked through it, my initial thoughts were this is impossible. We will never win. But that was my job. My job was to take the impossible and to make it a reality. So I started my six-plus-month quest, with an amazing team working alongside me, to win this business, and the first thing I did was research, Research the customer, but not just the customer. I researched the people that were involved in the process. I researched the products they had been buying all of it. Why? Because information is power, and if I was going to lead our team to this success, I needed to know as much as possible and I needed to be able to effectively use what I was learning at the right moment.

 Now, this project is one of the highlights of my career, not because we won, but because of how we did it, as the customer said to us while we're sitting around that conference room table. They said you had the unique ability to identify with our culture. And how did we do this? We researched, we listened and we learned, and you can do the same thing throughout your business. And it's not only. It's a lot easier today than it was 20 years ago. I could go on and on about this particular project and what they shared with us in the results, but it really was one of the high, really is one of the highlights of my career and something that I'm really really proud of, especially the people that I got to work with that and if you're listening, you know who you are. So I know you know that you can go down this rabbit hole of research on just about any topic and stay there for hours, click this, click that, learn this, learn that. But that's not ideal for most of us, unless that's what your role is.

Is research focused For me? I got it. It needs to be quick and simple and easy. So I created a quick little framework. You know, I love me some good frameworks and I want to share it with you and I call it the three C's of business research, customer, competitive and colleague no-transcript. So recently I did a Google search so I mean researching right on the importance of researching customers, and I got over 10 billion results in less than a minute Honestly 0.51 seconds to be exact. Needless to say, that is a lot of information that's available to you about the importance of researching your customers, and the first page of Google highlights things like allow marketers to get to the heart of what people want, identify customer segments, needs and behaviors, and all of this is important and it's really good.

 I don't mean to make fun of it, but let's take a little bit of a different approach to this and how it can actually help your business grow. I want you to think of it like a jigsaw puzzle that you're trying to complete. Each piece that you put in the right place is leading you to discover a really clear picture of your customer. Just like the puzzle, your customer has many different pieces. There's the business piece what they do, who are their customers, where are they located, what's the size of their organization, and a whole lot more. I'm sure you could think of a lot of different ones, right.

 Then there's the workplace piece. This is about what's their workplace strategy? What's their approach to their employees? What are they doing? What are they creating for their employees? What kind of work-life integration are they doing right? Then the next thing would be is who is their corporate real estate partner? Who's their A&D firm?

There's a lot to discover when you're researching a customer, but I think the final piece is the people. Who are the people in the business that are involved in the decision? What role do they play? What's important to them, and are you connected to them in any way? As you gather all this information on the customer, on the business, the workplace and the people, you'll start to get a really good picture of who your customer or prospect is. Who are they? This is going to give you some insights that you need to ensure that you're providing the right products, the right services and taking the right approach to this pursuit in order to be successful.

 So the next one is competitive research. Now, I've shared my thoughts before and I say it a lot, I even say it in the intro about the importance of being a student in the industry. If you know what I mean by that, then you have an understanding that the competitive landscape is one of the many parts of being a student in the industry, and if you really want to, in my opinion, have long-term success in our industry, which is an amazing place to work, you need to not only know your competition, you need to understand them. You need to understand what they sell and how they go to market, and a lot more. But this is about arming yourself with information to make you better. This is not about bashing your competition or their products. In fact, I would suggest that in any sales setting, in any sales environment, you never bring them up. However, you can talk about what makes you and your products the right solution for your customer by drawing comparisons in your conversation, but never, ever, mentioning who your competition is, especially by name. So here's an example Rather than tell your customer that the competitive product is not BIFMA compliant, talk about the importance of standards and why they are needed and why your organization focuses on ensuring your products meet the industry standards for quality and durability. You never mentioned them or their products, but you highlighted yours, right, and you put a little bit of doubt in their mind. Maybe a question for the customer to ask the competition are your products BIFMA compliant? Kind of put my spin on a somewhat famous quote know thy competition like you know thyself.

 So let's move to the last one colleague research. Whether you're in the office or working remotely, each of us is part of a team and have colleagues that are important to us, and in a lot of cases they become our extended family. But when you look to your left or to your right, or at the screen, if you're a remote employee, what do you really know about the people that you work with every day? Do you know their birthday, their kids' names, their favorite Starbucks drink? If not, you should. Truly, knowing the people you work with is a gift. It creates strong relationships and bonds that can last well beyond your time with any one company. But I get it Truly. Knowing your colleagues creates an environment of trust, enhanced collaboration, better communication. It actually fosters growth of the team and the organization. It helps you resolve conflicts better and without unnecessary drama and tension. To me, it makes the workplace better, allows you to relax, to be more productive and, once you build a solid relationship regardless of your differences, I truly believe it makes the world a better place.

Now, I know this sounds like a lot, friend, and I know that it can be overwhelming to do all this research, but I promise you the insights you will gain will help you and your business grow. There is no way you can do all of this at once. It will take time for you, and that's okay. Use the tools that are readily available to you, like LinkedIn and Google and Instagram, and now all the new AI tools that are available. This will actually just help you get started on this quest. But there's one thing that I want you to remember as you're moving forward Be curious. Be curious about your customers, your competition and, especially, your colleagues.

Outro:

Thanks for joining me today. I hope you got some amazing value out of this 10 to 1 episode. Come back and join us again soon and I hope you go out there and make today great, and we'll see you again in a couple of weeks. Take care, everyone.