Customer Trends

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The customers I interview for my clients range from engineers to programmers to CPAs to physicians to store owners to sailors to dealers to system integrators to women who buy skincare and makeup to salespeople to marketers to CEOs to...well, you get the picture. Just about everybody.

They always have something interesting to say. In fact, you'd be surprised - shocked, even - if you heard how much your own customers have to say about your product and company.

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As the leader of your company, what you decide to do is what gets done. At least, that's how it should happen. What you have control over (to a degree) are your own decisions, your own actions, and the management of your employees. You have some influence with your business partners. You have no direct control over your customers.

Of course, without customers, you wouldn't have a business - no revenue, no employees, no partners. The people most important to your business are your customers.

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Well, it's that time again. Elections. Always causes a bit of a dip in productivity, and a slowdown of the buying process, while everyone waits to see how the election will turn out.

Welcome to Distraction City.

In our news-dominated culture, distractions interrupt buying patterns. The larger the distraction, the larger the interruption. I tend to think of these periods as distraction-driven mini-dips. If there are a number of them in succession - especially those involving armed conflict or a terrorist attack - the dips can turn into a recession.

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New marketing vehicles rise up, get overused, and fall out of favor faster than ever. Email has been through all those phases. Pay-per-click is currently in the falling-out-of-favor phase. Blogging is still on the rise.

Blogging is being touted as a way to avoid the problems with email (it's being filtered like crazy, there's too much of it, and it's been corrupted by spam) and the problems with pay-per-click (click fraud, rising prices, and low conversion). Blogging gives you a way to communicate directly with your customers, get their feedback, improve your search engine rankings, establish yourself as a thought leader, and increase your popularity with the media. In short, blogging is cool.

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Economies are driven primarily by consumer beliefs and behaviors. When consumers are confident, they buy more. That's why economists watch consumer confidence levels. But that one measurement doesn't tell the whole story.

The real source of consumer confidence

A large portion of consumers are workers, employed by a company. Their confidence is directly linked to the confidence level of their boss. Workers watch their bosses carefully. If the boss is worried about the future, and openly agonizing about competition, slow sales, or too-high expenses, the worker is going to play it safe and hang on to his money.