I recently met with a legal practice that is considering the use of The Five Abilities® to broaden their client-base. We sat in their client conference room which was decorated with dark cherry wood walls, oil paintings, a long mahogany conference table, logo imprinted drink coasters and very comfortable leather-backed reclining armchairs. I thought I’d accidently walked onto the set of The Apprentice.
The team of attorneys couldn’t share their list of clients but they said they worked with many local celebrities – totally believable since I had just opened their front door for a person I had seen on local and national television. Coincidentally, this person had interviewed me for about a minute at a “Bring your daughter to work day” at Microsoft.
During the meeting one of the firm’s partners said, “Much of our new business comes through word-of-mouth but that’s unreliable. Our famous clients don’t want people to know they have legal issues. We need to reach a broader customer base in new ways.” Almost immediately, another partner said, “She means client base.” The first partner responded by saying, “Yeah, yeah.” She then turned to me and said, “We want more people paying us.”
This is an age old debate which sparks enough debate that it leads me to ask what the participants prefer before I start any workshop or engagement.
Use Google to search “customers versus clients” and you’ll get more than 40 million results – Do the same on Bing and you’ll get north of 69 million. Study the results until next month and you’ll have no more clarity than you have right now. What we find on Dictionary.com is the most common representation of these words.
From Dictionary.com the definitions are as follows:
- Customer: A person who purchases goods or services from another; buyer; patron
- Client: A person or group that uses the professional advice or services of a lawyer, accountant, advertising agency, architect, etc.
To me, people who buy products are also buying services and professional advice on how to make those products deliver positive results. Are they customers or clients?
On my website I use both terms interchangeably. In my book I most often use customer to refer to people buying education and services from The Five Abilities. My services include sales planning and execution services as well as assistance in hiring sales managers and representatives. While some say I serve clients I still use customer which comes from learnings I got at Hewlett-Packard in the days when the HP Way was still prevalent.
One of the most important lessons I got at HP was Dave Packard’s principle that everyone is a customer. He used to say, “Treat everyone like a customer because no matter what they do you will likely need their help someday and you benefit if they choose to help you.” This applied to co-workers, customers, contractors, the cooks in our cafeteria, etc.
The culture Dave and Bill created was one of service first. Serve others well and they will serve you well when you need it. With this as a cultural expectation internally, it couldn’t help but spill over to how we approached customers. We were trained from day one that great service at a personal level gets us great returns in terms of help internally and business externally. It proved out in both our performance but also in industry polling that consistently touted HP as the best in the areas of sales, service and support throughout the 1980s and early 1990s.
This is why I most often choose customer when referring to those who choose to pay for my services. My intention is to serve them well just like we learned from The HP Way.
I’m anxious to hear how you describe people and companies, who pay for your offerings and why you do so. Do you sell to customers or clients? Do you think it matters? I’d appreciate knowing what you’ve learned and the experiences that taught you.
Thanks for visiting The Five Abilities®.
©2014 Rick Wong – The Five Abilities® LLC
