Customer truth beats internal consensus
Every organization has an internal story about why customers buy. It is usually partly right and expensively incomplete. Evidence settles it.
About
Companies don't usually lose to better products. They lose to better communication.
Running a business is hard. Year after Year. With a history of 30+ years interviewing, studying, consulting and bringing significant bottom line improvement to businesses of all sizes, foreign and domestic, its become obvious that getting closer to your customers is the quickest and most sustainable way to succeed. Current science backs up the painful truth that your assumptions about how close you 'think" you are to your customer is usually wrong. Closer to Customers is a boutique customer intelligence firm, not looking to be the biggest, rather the best at improving the business - customer relationship. Our position is direct: most organizations are making consequential revenue decisions based on what they believe about customers rather than what customers have actually told them. As a result, sales, marketing, and customer experience all suffer from the same issue: assumptions, not customer truth. To compound the issue, organizational silos practically prevent one unified approach to the customer. We immerse ourselves into your business. We close that gap. Win rates improve, customer churn falls off, marketing results improve dramatically, everyone in the organization is on the same page and the customers and prospects feel it.
- Customer Truth
- Better Decisions
- Better Experiences
- Better Revenue
What we believe
Independence is what makes candor possible
The value is not in asking questions. It is in being the party customers are willing to answer honestly.
Intelligence is only useful if it changes a decision
We do not deliver research for its own sake. Every finding is tied to a decision about positioning, messaging, sales or experience.
Better revenue is the point
Clarity, alignment and insight matter because they protect and grow revenue. That is the measure we hold ourselves to.
Experience
Experienced judgment, applied to your specific business.
Engagements are led personally, not delegated. Better questions = more truthful responses. We sit with your leadership team when the results are shared and the decisions get made. Informed decisions = confident action = stronger revenue.
- 30+ years of commercial leadership experience
- Organizations in size from SMB's to Enterprise
- U.S. domestic and international based companies
- Certified StoryBrand Guide, trained personally by Donald Miller
- Win/loss, messaging strategy, and customer experience intelligence
- Senior-level advisory to CEOs, CROs, CMOs and boards
Which of your current growth decisions has never been validated with a customer?
That question is where every engagement starts. One conversation is usually enough to know whether there is work worth doing.