Merchants Must Understand Customers

Understanding customers is as important to merchants as cash flow is to a financial practitioner, it has been claimed.

The suggestion comes from Paul Alexander, chief executive officer of advisory services business Beyond Analysis.

He argues that there is a temptation in slower economic times to attempt to gain customers from any direction.

This could leave companies attempting to steal custom away from their competitors with no real regard as to whether it is better suited to their own methods of business, he points out.

But company principals are told that a consideration of their target market could help them to secure business which is better suited to the way they would choose to work if times were more prosperous.

Mr Alexander continues to assert that it was a move towards the former approach, rather than the latter, that played a role in the rise of the credit crunch.

By focusing too much on making a “fast buck”, he suggests that financial services providers did not make the best advantage out of the risk assessment tools at their disposal.

Strategy director at Beyond Analysis Will Beresford previously recommended that chief executive officers should look inwards to ensure they are aware of everything that is taking place within their own companies during turbulent times.

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