Art of Perception Building in Key Customer Business

Thanks to internet penetration we live in a small world with big data, people have an increased access to nearly any topic. Knowledge acquisition is easy, experiences have increased, ways of doing things are evolving continuously contributing towards change in this digital disruptive world. So what is it all leading towards? Many things, and one of the key things is “Perception Building” – “The way in which things are understood, interpreted and regarded”.

Perception building has been the key take away for customers across the globe in today’s digital world for decision making process. At every stage of lifecycle starting from Sales to Aftersales, the customer has developed a specific perception building mechanism. It is important for services/product companies to analyze customer perception and evolve their strategy continuously.

Art of perception building plays key role here. Some of the perception building and management strategies according to my experience in the IT industry are:

• Contextual Content

Many companies use manipulation techniques that never build the right perception in the long run. Your marketing messages over multiple communication channels should have consistency, transparency, intactness, simplicity and culture orientation.

• Sales role is re-defined. Very first thing one should do is “Customer Perception Analysis”

It helps in managing result-oriented sales process. Majority of customers have made up their minds before they actually start looking for anything. Perception management play a consultative role here. Contrary to traditional methods, digital media becomes the game-changer from a sales perspective.

• Building right perception does not end with successful sales

It is a continuous effort making it important to evolve at every stage to setup and maintain long-living key customer engagement.

• Perception building activities across the organization, irrespective of role

During the engagement, make sure that perception building activities are always on at all levels, such as zero tolerance on KRAs, innovation, proactive suggestions, strategic re-positioning, value addition, technology & tools recommendation and so on. Each individual who engages with the customer to deliver services or products should contribute.

• Major contributor towards perception building is customer experience

Establish proactive ways of measuring customer satisfaction and take corrective actions. Strong and open communication always help in building the right perception and trust.

How to kick start such activities? If you are new to the game and want to utilize such perception building strategies for entering in key customer longevity, start by putting your thoughts on the following:

1. Ways of improving your strategic positioning, which is customer-oriented
2. Analysis and actions to address your competitive business environment
3. Areas to move up in the value chain, be it existing customer or new customer
4. Establish managed communication and governance mechanism to win as well as retain customer-base