Some years ago I was goofing around with my daughter, who was five at the time, and in a moment of silliness I asked her what held the Earth up in space. I thought the question would stump her, but she looked at me in complete seriousness and said a giant turtle was holding the Earth on its back. I smiled and asked what held the turtle up, to which she said, “It's turtles, Dad. Turtles all the way down.” Children have a unique perspective of the world. Anything is possible because they have no experiences that teach otherwise.

Children see the possibility of things. Adults, unfortunately, often see the limitation of things. There is a saying, “In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few.” I sometimes struggle to find the balance between capitalizing on my experience in working with customer information to drive sales, and being open to new ideas on how to do this even better. The more expert I become, the harder it is to abandon my practices even when I (occasionally) get input they are not as effective as they once were.

In recent columns I have discussed how customer experiences during Moments of Truth influence the Share of Inputs (SOI) customers give their retailers. Generally, your SOI with a customer is a report card on how well you meet their needs. This model of customer behavior is very useful to ag retailers since it suggests a method of increasing your share of each high potential customer's business. The way forward to increasing sales, loyalty and profits is as simple and as difficult as improving key Moments of Truth with customers who matter the most. But here's the snag, which relates to the turtles, the child's mind and the expert's mind. Instead of learning from customer Moments of Truth and the resulting Share of Inputs report card, most of us don't say “Ah Ha” to ourselves, we say “YaBut.” I call this unproductive mental habit the YaBut filter.

Here's an example of the YaBut filter. Recently I visited one of our clients to help implement the customer knowledge tools we had worked on together. I was reviewing his Share of Inputs in chemical, seed and fertilizer for key customers. It was clear from the analysis and customer profiles that several customers offered significant opportunity for growth. I asked my client what his plans were to increase SOI with these customers. He immediately used his YaBut filter to explain there was nothing he could do to increase share with these customers because…(fill in the blank with any excuse you want). I nodded and asked if he would agree these customers were reasonable people, and therefore over the long term they were going to ensure their needs were met as best they could in the market. In other words, over the long term customers do business with retailers who successfully satisfy their needs.

My client agreed, and we proceeded to discuss how he was using his YaBut filter to provide easy answers to why his customers were not doing more business with him. It may be he had all the potential business he could have with these customers. That is not the point, and it is a mistake to hide here. The problem with the YaBut filter is it rationalizes why you don't have the results you want to have. By offering convenient reasons for achieving less than we want, we make ourselves unaccountable for the results we achieve. When we let ourselves off the hook for our results, it's easy to accept things as they have always been. Nothing changes, and you get the Share of Inputs you have always got.

My client and I developed a plan to determine where his offer does not satisfy the business needs of some customers. Based on the customer profiles AgKnowlogy developed for him, we created category-specific goals for these customers and developed strategies based on each customer's SOI to help him achieve his goals. We also reviewed how Moments of Truth are a link to the SOI customers give retailers. This Share of Inputs is a report card on how well customers perceive their needs are being met.

Remember hope is not a strategy and working hard is not a business plan. To change the Share of Inputs you achieve with high potential customers, you need to ensure their experience at key Moments of Truth is of high quality. Learning to shut down your YaBut filter and coming to grips with your customer report card is a vital step in a deeper understanding of customer needs. This will help you develop better solutions for these needs. It's not a quick fix, but over time this approach will provide you with steady growth in capturing a higher Share of Inputs with key customers.

Bill Keogh is the owner of AgKnowlogy Inc., a company that helps retailers use customer information to improve their business results. If you have a success story to share or an idea for a future column, e-mail him at info@agknowlogy.com, call 905/868-9953 or visit www.agknowlogy.com.

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