“… The new source of competitive advantage is customer centricity: deeply understanding your customer’s needs
and fulfilling them better than anyone else.” — HBR
This is a direct quote from the September edition of the prestigious Haaahvard Business Review. Now, before I delve into what REALLY matters here — like the absurd fact that this “customer centricity” (which I’ve been writing about for YEARS) is described as a “new source” of competitive advantage– I’d like to go on record and say that Harvard has long woefully un-impressed me.
I briefly and casually dated a guy once who went to grad school at Harvard. Visited him once. Wished I were back at Tech, were it not for the ride up there with my cousin and friend… which was super fun but will not be discussed. =) Bottom-line: The boy and the school… left me underwhelmed, to say the least.
Back to me FINALLY being affirmed by the fancy pants HBR. =) HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW is saying — in 2016– that understanding your customer’s needs is a “NEW” source of competitive advantage? Seriously? What shocking research will you reveal next? That the earth is, in fact, round?
Welcome to the real world, to the world of Women Who WOW, to Main Street America, Harvard Business Review… where money is made– and business doors kept open– through eye-to-eye sales, not exclusively through new rounds of investors.
On Main Street America, we have LONG known that she who knows her market best, wins.
But only always.
I first started speaking about “knowing your market intimately” as a CRITICAL marketing strategy in 2010 and began writing about this in February of 2011 with this article. Since early 2011, I have detailed — in about 30 additional articles– why this competitive advantage (to know your market intimately, described now as “new” by HBR) is so important.
Because I’ve said for AT LEAST 6 years now, demographics do not buy. PEOPLE buy.
So, as Dan Kennedy says in the October edition of the GKIC newsletter, data (demographics) will tell you how many 3rd generation coal miners are no longer working in coal… but it CAN NOT tell you that these same “coal miners say, ‘piss on your job training’ and do not want welfare. They want to mine coal.” Data can tell you numbers, but it can not speak from, for or to the heart.
To quote Harvard Business Review, you need to “deeply understand your customer’s needs….” I happen to like the word “intimately”… but deeply works too.
Data can tell you that more and more Americans are obese and don’t want to be, but it can’t tell you the feeling of failure so many face when battling a seemingly hopeless and never-ending war against those last 10 or 20 pounds.
Demographics can tell you how many small businesses fail each year and that fewer small businesses are opening in general now. But it cannot tell you that these businesses represent — in many cases — the HEART of their owners and is so much more important than a balance sheet.
More on this, if you’re interested, in my Advanced Guide to Marketing With Muscle.
Anyway, welcome to the party, HBR. We didn’t exactly miss you, but — like whenever a well -known celebrity pops into the real world — it sure got us talking when you showed up…
better late than never, I presume.
