Buyers vs. Customers

Defining what a customer is should be an easy task for most businesses. Unfortunately, many would say it’s simply someone who buys your product or service. But (in my not-so humble opinion) no business today should settle for such a partial view of the lifeblood of its existence. Someone who buys your product or service is simply a buyer, nothing more.

So what makes someone a customer? A true customer, to our way of thinking at NewGrowth, is someone who not only buys your product or service but willingly chooses to come back again and again to your business. A customer is someone who has a relationship with you. By the way, the above definition implies your customer is a person – a human being, regardless of whether he/she buys for a business.

Here’s a simple test to check whether your company has customers or buyers: can you randomly select five recent sales and call up the individuals directly responsible for purchasing or using your products and ask how they’re doing?

Put another way, does your company:

1. Have accurate data about recent purchases and the companies that made them;
2. Know which person at a given company made the actual decision to purchase; and
3. Is that person willing to take your call?

If you can answer “yes” to all three, there’s a good chance you have actual customers. If not, you’d better get busy – your sales pipeline depends on it.