When your customers are wrong

Now we’ve all heard your customers are always right. Well, sometimes, your customers are just plain old wrong.  Sometimes, your customers just don’t know what they want.  Don’t try to use this as an excuse to force your product, service, or event down your customers’ throats, but as an opportunity to give your customers what they really want.

Sometimes, your customer just doesn’t know what’s out there and what’s good for them.  They don’t know what possibilities exist to add value to their business (oh, and this goes for B2B and B2C).  They will always want an incremental improvement of what they currently have or purchase.  They can’t think about innovation like you can.  Take consumer media for example.  If customers had their way, we’d all be listening to music on DVD’s and buying them in stores for $20.  Movies on Laser Discs! Thanks to companies like Apple that have introduced products like the iPod, we now have music digitally on tiny little devices, and can listen to any song anytime we want.

So now, every year, our customers expect us to put out the same conference or trade show with just a couple more delegates or attendees, a couple more exhibitors, and a little bit more value.  Or, products you have created to include a couple more features, maybe a little cheaper.

As the providers of products and services, it is our duty…our obligation, to provide our customers with the unexpected. They are paying us for something, and in this new world, choice is abundant. So we must earn their trust. By blowing them away, not only will you cultivate loyal customers, but the word of mouth and social media exposure you will receive will drive significant brand value and new business. My next post will dive deeper into ways you can look at innovating and uncovering hidden potential in your events.

3 Responses to “When your customers are wrong”

1. Dean Hills says:

   July 9, 2010 at 2:02 pm

   Jaime, I totally agree with the premise of your post. Our company PRMconnect has created a product called Leadature that was originally intended to be a evolutionary product that moved tradeshow and face to face marketers away from paper literature distribution and toward a greener paperless program.

   What has happened is that we ended up creating an evolutionary system combining leads, literature, measurement and feedback that is so disruptive to the traditional methodology for managing sales lead capture, management and literature distribution that it has met with skepticism and distrust from Face to Face program managers.

   Finding adopters that are willing to step out away from the pack has proven challenging. I would like to know your thoughts in future posts on how you believe you can get potential customers to swim against the tide of conventional wisdom and try new and innovative things.

   While everyone gives lip service to being innovative and leading the pack, very few event program managers are willing to actually deliver on that promise.
2. Jaime says:

   July 11, 2010 at 9:05 am

   Thanks for the comment Dean. I wonder if you intentionally used the word evolutionary vs. revolutionary as there is in my opinion a pretty significant difference. Evolutionary is what the customer asks for and revolutionary is what they need.

   With regards to your product, there seems to be a need for a critical mass adoption to really make it work at an event, and especially with trade shows all the exclusive contracts make it even that much more difficult. If you care to share, I’d be interested in hearing more about it and what you do to address the skepticism and distrust.
3. 5 Steps to Finding Your Disruptive Force | Jaime Says Marketing is for Conferences, Tradeshows, and Media. says:

   July 11, 2010 at 1:41 pm

   [...] Your customers are wrong post gives a brief overview on how your customers are wrong, and what I mean is essentially, they [...]