Do You Know Your Customers?

Do You Know Your Customers?

Editorialists have traditionally used space like this to offer advice to readers. In this issue I would like to reverse that strategy and ask for some advice that will help not only me, but all JCO subscribers. If I receive enough responses, I'll write a report for future publication.

Several decades of reading highly touted business management books and self-help books of every description have left me suspicious of any such volume that receives an unusual amount of promotion. Those publications seldom deliver what they pledge, and reading them has been a waste of time more often than not. It has led me to formulate White's Rule No. 4: A book's quality varies indirectly with its hype.

For this reason, I purposely avoided reading the book by Harvey Mackay, Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive. I had seen some rather lukewarm reviews in newspapers and business magazines, and I wasn't that impressed with the author's apparent tone. However, if you recall when the book was published in 1988, you may remember some of the testimonials from people as dissimilar as Gloria Steinem and Gerald Ford and publications as different as USA Today and The Wall Street Journal, enlisted by Mackay to give vigorous approval to his first publishing effort.

Mackay is CEO of the Mackay Envelope Corporation in Minneapolis, and from what I have read he must have adrenal glands the size of grapefruit. His biography makes Horatio Alger look like an underachiever. Mackay put that same drive to work in learning the publishing business, and he quickly had his book on the best-seller list, where it stayed for several months. The sequel, Beware the Naked Man Who Offers You His Shirt, was inevitably a success as well.

Despite my reservations, on a day when I had to drive about 400 miles I rented an abridged audiocassette recording of Swim with the Sharks from our local video store. I found the book to be much better than I had anticipated. One chapter in particular contains information that could be of significant benefit to orthodontists if tailored to their needs.

That chapter is "The 66 Question Customer Profile". Mackay demands that every one of his salespeople get the answers to 66 questions about every one of their customers. The profile includes detailed inquiries into the customers' backgrounds, their families, their education and military service, their business experience, their special interests and lifestyles, and anything else that might help the salespeople get to know their customers better.

As I listened to this chapter, it occurred to me how little I really knew about my customers. I'm not speaking here about patients, but about the principal customers of the practice--the general dentists who refer (or who I wish would refer) their patients to me. I don't know the names of their spouses or children, where they had their undergraduate schooling, what hobbies they or their families have, what service clubs or political parties they belong to, what religions they practice, what kind of books they like, and on and on.

I realized that if I knew as much about my customers as Mackay's salespeople know about theirs, I would not only know the dentists of my community better, but I would probably understand why they think the way they do and what they really expect from me in the way of professional services. If I had something like the "Mackay 66" for each of the area's dentists, I have an idea I would even develop a new tolerance and appreciation for some of those whom I now consider irredeemable jerks.

What I'm hoping is that some of you readers already use dentist profiles that give you valuable information about professional colleagues, and that you would be willing to share them with other JCO readers. I wouldn't expect one profile to suit every orthodontist, but it might be interesting to discover what is considered important by those who use such questionnaires.

So if you are using some form of dentist profile, I'd appreciate receiving a copy at JCO, 1828 Pearl St., Boulder, CO 80302. We'll be sure to recognize your contribution to any consensus profile we develop for publication. I hope to hear from lots of you.

Oh, incidentally--Swim with the Sharks is now in paperback and well worth your investment.