Page 196 - The Drucker Lectures

Manage Yourself and Then Your Company [ 177

time it was very small to when it became a huge multinational,
spent four weeks a year outside the company. Whenever a sales-
man went on vacation, an executive took his or her place for two
weeks, twice a year, and called on customers and sold to custom-
ers and introduced new products into the hospital market. As a
result, that company understood the rapidly changing market.
Another thing you need to understand is what we now call
the “core competencies” of your organization. What are we re-
ally good at? What do our customers pay us for? Why do they
buy from us? In a competitive, nonmonopolistic market—and
that is what the world has become—there is absolutely no reason
why a customer should buy from you rather from your competi-
tor. None. He pays you because you give him something that is
of value to him. What is it that we get paid for? You may think
this is a simple question. It is not.
I have been working with some of the world’s biggest man-
ufacturers, producers, and distributors of packaged consumer
goods. All of you use their products, even in Slovenia. They have
two kinds of customers. One, of course, is the retailer. The other
is the housewife. What do they pay for? I have been asking this
question for a year now. I do not know how many companies in
the world make soap, but there are a great many. And I can’t tell
the difference between one kind of soap or the other. And why
does the buyer have a preference—and a strong one, by the way?
What does it do for her? Why is she willing to buy from one
manufacturer when on the same shelves in the United States or
in Japan or in Germany they are soaps from other companies?
She usually does not even look at them. She reaches out for that
one soap. Why? What does she see? What does she want? Try
to work on this.
Incidentally, the best way to find out is to ask customers not
by questionnaire but by sitting down with them and finding out.
The most successful retailer I know in the world is not one of the