It is drilled into the minds of all business school students (like me) that it is vital to the survival of your business to know your customer. After all, how do you create a product that satisfies your customers’ needs if you don’t know what those needs are?
You could say the effective marketer’s motto should be: “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”
My senior year of college, Handel gave me the opportunity to apply the knowledge I learned in the classroom. I specifically got to see the “seek first to understand” portion of this saying in action. My first assignment at Handel was to research federally recognized Indian tribes and find out which programs each tribe offered its members.
It was a daunting task. There are 564 federally recognized tribes, almost all of which have multiple programs to support their members.
Three months after I began, I felt as though the list was as complete as possible. I had also gathered more knowledge about the tribal communities than I could have imagined before hiring on at Handel. For example, I know that some tribes in Alaska don’t receive mail for days at a time because the surrounding water is frozen and the ships delivering the mail cannot get into port. I know that if there is a community event going on, I will probably be unable to reach any one at the tribal office, as everyone is probably participating in that event. Community is of utmost importance. I could go on and on.
As I continue to connect with individuals in the tribal communities in order to share with them what RiteTrack can do for them, I appreciate more and more the value of knowing your customer. Because we at Handel seek to understand our customers and their needs first, we can create a product that really suits their needs, and in turn, we strive to make it understood that RiteTrack is the answer to those needs.