My Very First Business Management Lesson: Know What Your Customers Actually Want

Some of the most durable business lessons arrive long before you know you are learning them. Mine came at the age of ten, on a worn-down village beach on the southeast shores of Lake Michigan, and it comes down to a single idea: understand what your customers actually want, not what you assume they want.

Having spent my early years growing up on the south side of Chicago, I had the chance to spend parts of those summers by the lake. Back then I was probably more focused on “who cut the cheese” than “who moved the cheese” (1), but I picked up something on that beach that remains fresh in my mind more than 55 years later.

The Pie Company That Got It Backwards

It was a sunny day, and the owner of a frozen fruit pie company was talking with a number of ladies. I was nearby, likely either digging the greatest hole ever in the sand or trying to put all of the rocks on the beach back into the lake.

The owner was expounding on how hard his company had worked to produce frozen pies that, when baked, came out clean and neat, without any overflow of the fruit contents. He went on at length about his team’s efforts to make this “neat” pie, and he was clearly proud of what his company had accomplished.

He paused and waited, plainly expecting to be showered with the ladies’ accolades. For a moment there was an awkward silence, and then one lady said, uncomfortably, “But that is not what we want.” Visibly stunned, he responded, “Okay, but how could it be that you do not want a neat, freshly baked pie?”

Several ladies answered in rapid succession, almost in unison, that they did not want to serve a “neat” pie to their family or their guests. Those neat pies looked like they had been bought in a store. What they wanted was a “messy” pie, maybe a little ragged and overflowed a bit. That was the kind of pie that looked homemade, and that is what they wanted to serve.

I remember to this day the expressions on his face, ranging from confusion to frustration, before he let out a bemused chuckle: “Well, I guess that I need to get back to my team and discuss reversing our direction.”

Presumed Wants Versus Actual Wants

Here was a business owner who presumed what his customers wanted and invested a great deal of effort and cost to fill those wants, only to find that his presumed wants were exactly the opposite of what his customers actually wanted.

The lesson is a plain one: a business owner needs to communicate with, and better yet stay close to, their customers so they gain a full appreciation of what those customers are looking for. Only then can the business respond accurately to those wants. That is how a company stays relevant and, who knows, perhaps even becomes successful. As the saying goes, know your customer.

It is the same discipline that underpins serious strategic planning: test your assumptions against what the market is actually telling you before you commit resources. Owners who build their growth plans on real customer feedback rather than internal presumption are the ones we most often see turn that insight into durable enterprise value, and it is a theme that runs through our business growth advisory work.

So, I am no longer ten years old, any hole that I dug in the sand is long gone, and somehow there are still rocks on that beach. But the lesson I learned way back then remains just as pertinent today.

(1) A nod to Spencer Johnson, author of the bestselling 1998 business management book, “Who Moved My Cheese, An Amazing Way to Deal With Change In Your Work and In Your Life.”