I write a lot about the importance of targeting ruthlessly. Most Skyway Community members do effective targeting thanks in part to podcast, tools, webinars, RFP Score, and so on. So for this article, let’s assume that, thanks to targeting, you already know who your customer is. Now it’s time to dig deeper and further improve your targeting by knowing your customer’s customer.
Your customers don’t buy products, they buy solutions. My favorite Zig Ziglar version of this is when he said, “People buy thousands of ¼ inch drills each year. However, they aren’t buying them because they need a ¼ inch drill…they are buying them because they need a quarter inch hole.” Are you thinking the same way? Are you targeting with the same understanding of providing a solution instead of a product?
Let me use a government contracting example. Let’s say you provide training services to the military. Your customer (whom you interact with on a regular basis) is the agency, the program manager, the contracting officer, the contracting officer’s representative, the acquisition team, and so on. Your customer’s customer is that trainee (whom you only interact with during the actual training). This trainee is the person whom the acquisition team is serving. In some contracts (like IT network support, for example), you may not see the customer’s customer at all (unless there is a problem).
The better you know the customer’s customer, the better you are able to solve their problem versus just selling them something (or being perceived that you are just selling them something). Have you ever had someone sell you something that didn’t quite solve your actual problem? It sucks, right? You end up having to break up with that vendor and then start over. Imagine if you were stuck with that vendor that didn’t quite solve the problem for several years (like in some government contracts). That really sucks. I know because I’ve done it.
And that is why many government acquisition people are ‘‘change averse’’.
It’s really hard to sell them a solution if you don’t know what problem they are solving. And to clarify, the requirement and the RFP are just an extension of the process to find a solution. When someone says you need to “read beyond” the RFP, this is what they mean: know the solution their customer is looking for. Do they need a ¼ inch drill, or a quarter inch hole? Or, do they really need a ½ inch hole but they don’t know it? In that case, what to do?
When you know the solution won’t fix the underlying problem (because you’ve targeted the work so well), you have two options: fight or flight. Fight means to lock in and work on influencing the requirement and the resulting RFP to make sure they solve the real problem. Flight means to just walk away (to the next opportunity).
These are really the only two options. Neither of them is easy. That’s why people often invent a third option: ignore the flags and bid anyway. Nothing lies down that road but pain and frustration.