Dying is Easy. Customer-Centric is Hard.

British actor and director Sir Donald Wolfit reportedly spoke these last words on his death bed: "Dying is easy, comedy is hard." I was thinking of Sir Donald the other day while helping a client get past a “product-centric” moment. Customer-centric is not intuitive. Not for a marketer anyway.

There is something in your DNA that makes you a marketer vs. a brain surgeon or rocket scientist. That something keeps you “pitching”. Next time you’re at a party, scan the crowd and see if you can find the marketer. It’s easy. They’re always pitching something. A restaurant, a movie, a book, whatever. They’re always pitching.

Customer-centric behavior is the antimatter of what we know as marketing. It’s as if Robert Preston suddenly became Freud. Pitching is replaced with listening and diagnosis. The welfare of the customer is far more important than selling a widget today. Try that one out on your board next month.

My Dad was a neurosurgeon. He performed hundreds of back surgeries. He told me once about a patient who was complaining of lower back pain and wanted it fixed. My Dad told the patient that surgery may ultimately be required but that his condition wasn’t serious enough to warrant the risk. I was stunned. My Dad unsold the buyer. Why? Because the customer experience would have been poor! My Dad isn’t a marketer. He was acting in the best interests of his patient. Regardless of the sales results. That is customer-centric.

To be customer-centric, sales cannot be the mission but the outcome. Now that’s hard.