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Seven Greatest Ideas for Helping a Business Customer to Buy Wisely • 69

well believe it. Actually that is not strong enough, you should believe it because it
damn well is true.

The best way of ensuring the right approach is to use their terms. 'What was
your basis of decision?', and 'On which points did we fall down?' will get you the
information you require. Be prepared to discover customer criteria that you were
unaware of during the sales campaign or during the period when you were deliver-
ing product. Criteria do change, and the original decision to buy from you may have
been made on grounds totally different from the current way that the customer
looks at alternatives. Try to get the person to talk about your people, but do it
sensitively. You do not want to have to agree implicitly with a criticism that may
make it difficult to propose that that person works with the customer again.

The test of whether you have understood from the customer's point of view
what went wrong is if you are able to do a good summary of it at the end of the
meeting and subsequently in writing.

So, you have finished finding out why you are on a lost business visit, and you
have learned the lessons it offers, it is now time to put the boot in. I know I said that
you should suggest to the senior person that you were going to reopen the cam-
paign, and that probably remains good advice for most of the meeting. But towards
the end you must have some way of offering to do something or to accept a consola-
tion order or anything that will enable you and your company to stay in touch with
the customer. Remember it is always easier to build on existing customers rather
than finding new ones, so always try to get back in except, I suppose, where things
have gone so wrong that there is no way that the customer will give you a fair crack
of the whip. In this last case, thank the person and retire 'bloody but unbowed.'

Idea 44 - Moke sure your business processes deliver

Look at the customer facing processes you are building separately from all the oth-
ers. I know that all business processes eventually lead to the customer, but the direct