When Jack Stahl was an executive at the Coca-Cola Co., one of the company’s large customers decided not to serve Coke products in its stores anymore. Although this cost Coca-Cola a significant chunk of business, the decision was made to continue to give the ex-customer help and attention. One of Stahl’s top salespeople, in fact, paid regular visits to the company’s headquarters, offering ideas on how to improve operations. Two years later, Coca-Cola earned that business back. Demonstrating a genuine interest in a customer’s business, in both good times and bad, is just one of the valuable tips that Stahl offers in his book, Lessons on Leadership: The 7 Fundamental Management Skills for Leaders at All Levels. In an interview with FuelNet, Stahl, who served five years as president of Coke’s North America group and more than four as CEO of Revlon, discussed, among other topics, the importance of being a trusted resource for a customer.

FuelNet: Having a product or service that is relevant to your customer is essential. But you also talk about the need to become a resource for your customer. Why?

Stahl: As a supplier, one of the things you’re trying to do is protect and build your business for the long term. To the extent you have a very narrow relationship with a customer, meaning it’s limited to one product or one service, you’re always potentially vulnerable to another supplier coming in and disrupting your relationship. If you can, you should try and broaden the relationship with other services. At Coca-Cola, for example, we used to routinely talk with our customers about supplying them demographic information or specialized studies that would help them better understand their consumers. What you’re doing is building a series of connections between you and the customer that is much more difficult to penetrate. By broadening the relationship, you really are protecting and positioning your business for the long term.

FuelNet: How much time can a company realistically spend getting to know its customers?

Stahl: While it does take time, I think it can happen by being with your customer in their retail stores, for example, or in their operating environment or their manufacturing environment. Also, in every interaction, every sales call, you have the opportunity to learn. It can be as simple as asking five, six, seven important questions about your customer’s business. What are their strategies? What are their key objectives? What are their measurements for success? By asking those kinds of questions, you are shifting the nature of the conversation from communicating outward to the customer to listening and learning.

FuelNet: Is this about understanding that your success and your customer’s success are intertwined?

Stahl: Absolutely. If you make the assumption that it’s about the longer term, then the way that you and the customer are both going to win is by expanding the pie and expanding the amount of dollars that come in from the ultimate consumer.

FuelNet: What do you mean when you talk about the importance of having a destination for a customer relationship?

Stahl: Ask the customer to describe where the relationship could go over a long period of time. What do they want from you as a supplier? That customer might say, for example, that in three years they want their business together to be twice the size it is today. That’s a numerical destination. Or the customer might say they are going to be moving into these new markets, these new product lines, these new [regions], and they want you to be their supplier of choice. That would [suggest that] you’re going to grow with the customer. To achieve that as a supplier, it might require that you build and invest in capacity or add facilities and salespeople. That helps define your own strategy.

FuelNet: When you were at Coca-Cola, you would call and check in with your top 100 customers from time to time. Why?

Stahl: A phone call doesn’t take a lot of time, but it says to the customer that you care about their business and that you are, in effect, part of their team as they work to grow their business.

FuelNet: But you’d better listen to what they say, right?

Stahl: Damn right. Once someone tells you something and says this isn’t right, this isn’t working, then you have the clear responsibility to follow up on it and drive it to earth. I would often meet with a customer with our salesperson. The salesperson hoped there would be no surprises, that everything would be fine. In truth, the best sales calls are the ones where you can get engagement from the customer and he is sharing with you problems and opportunities.

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