Remember when we first learned how to dance? We spent a lot of time making mistakes and stepping on our partner’s toes. But once we learned what makes our partner tick we found that there is nothing like dancing, because we were in perfect harmony with our partner. This is because we found (through trial and error) what moves to make to suit our partner’s specific needs and wants and how to address them suitably. When we can anticipate our partner’s every move and understand why our partner wants to move this way or that way, we can only then understand their mindset.

Just like dancing, conducting successful value analysis studies requires us to understand the mindset of our customers. This will enable us to know what moves to make, so that we can guide our customers to identify their true needs and wants (or functions), not what we think they need or want. Webster tells us that the meaning of mindset is a state of mind or a way of thinking about things, which makes it apparent that we can’t ever really know our customers’ mindset until we discern what they are thinking about the products, services, and technologies they are buying.

I can’t tell you how many times executives have told me that they believe their staff’s mindset is always, “negative when it comes to changing their practices, products, or technologies,” so there is, “no way they can save money,” if it involves their staff. In fact, our experience has demonstrated just the opposite: That staff will change their practices, products, or technologies if you truly understand their mindset. This can be done by either dancing with them perfectly in order to move them to a new mindset (lower cost alternative), or by raising their consciousness to the fact that there is much waste and inefficiency in their present practices, products, or technologies that you can fix to make their job easier while giving them equal or improved outcomes. But first, you must “become your customer” to make these savings and quality gains happen at your organization!

The only way to understand our customers’ mindset is to “become our customers.” The only way to “become our customers” is to get deep inside our customers’ heads by asking questions like these: What do our customers want or need? What do our customers worry about? How did they first come to use the products, services, or technologies they are buying now? What would happen if they made a change? We then observe how they use their products in the real world.

Getting into our customers’ heads isn’t easy, but it can be done if we become “customer-obsessed.” By “customer-obsessed” I mean that you need to be preoccupied with the thoughts and feelings of your customers at all times. Your own thoughts and feelings come second, third, or even last in the scheme of things, because the customer is king in the world of value analysis. In fact, value analysis begins and ends with our customers.