Scott Foster · Shape Executive · Customer Value & Commercial Excellence
Value Creation Begins With The Customer
Years ago, after taking over a business, I took the entire sales team away for a conference.
Most expected discussions about competitors.
Pricing.
Products.
Sales targets.
Instead, we studied Amazon.
We studied Laminex.
We studied Domino's.
We studied Bunnings.
Not because we wanted to become them.
Because I wanted the team to understand something most businesses miss.
Value creation begins with the customer.
Amazon taught us about certainty.
Pick.
Pack.
Ship.
Communicate.
Customers knew what was happening and when.
Laminex taught us about positioning.
The brand became so dominant that many customers referred to the category by the product name itself.
Domino's taught us about visibility.
The pizza tracker removed uncertainty.
Customers could see exactly where their order was at every stage of the process.
Bunnings taught us about convenience.
Place inventory closer to the customer.
Reduce travel.
Reduce waiting.
Reduce friction.
Different industries.
Different products.
The same outcome.
Customers chose them more often.
Stayed longer.
Trusted them more.
And became harder to win away.
Those experiences became the minimum standard we expected from ourselves.
Not aspirational.
Minimum standard.
The Coffee Stop Problem
At some point during the conference, the discussion shifted.
We stopped talking about those businesses.
We started talking about our own.
How long did it take to open an account?
How long did it take to increase a credit limit?
How long did it take to return a call?
How long did it take to provide technical advice?
How long did it take to deliver a sample?
How long did it take to resolve a claim?
How much uncertainty did we create for customers every day?
The uncomfortable reality was that many customer visits were little more than a coffee stop on the way to the next customer.
Every sales leader in a B2B or B2B2C industrial business knows exactly what that means.
The rep drops in.
Has a coffee.
Talks about business.
Talks about the weekend.
Asks if anything is needed.
Moves on.
Everyone feels good.
Nothing changes.
We wanted something different.
We wanted our people walking into customer meetings with something valuable.
Margin improvement discussions.
Inventory optimisation discussions.
Growth opportunities.
Productivity ideas.
Working capital opportunities.
Something useful.
Something that helped the customer run a better business.
Because customers rarely hate losing suppliers.
They hate losing businesses that make their lives easier.
The Shanghai Lesson
I remember visiting a global architectural firm in Shanghai.
Rather than discussing our products, I asked a simple question.
“What is the biggest challenge facing your business?”
The answer surprised me.
The challenge wasn't product quality.
The challenge wasn't pricing.
The challenge wasn't availability.
The challenge was that manufacturers weren't educating the specification and design channels.
The architects wanted knowledge.
They wanted insight.
They wanted support.
They wanted help making better decisions.
We left that meeting with a completely different perspective.
Our objective was no longer simply to sell products.
Our objective was to become a trusted source of technical knowledge and specification support within the design process.
That changed the conversations.
It changed the relationships.
It changed how customers viewed us.
Most importantly, it made us harder to replace.
If Dashboards Tell Us What Happened Yesterday
Over the years, other senior leaders would often ask me the same question.
“How can you spend so much time in the market visiting customers?”
The answer was simple.
Technology made it possible.
We invested heavily in ERP, CRM, business intelligence and reporting capability across multiple countries and markets.
I didn't need to be tied to a desk looking at dashboards full of historical information.
The business was visible.
The inventory was visible.
The customers were visible.
The performance was visible.
The risks were visible.
The opportunities were visible.
Across multiple time zones.
Across multiple markets.
Across multiple countries.
The real question I often asked in return was:
If dashboards tell us what happened yesterday, who is spending time understanding what happens tomorrow?
Because customer frustration rarely appears in a monthly board pack.
Changing customer expectations don't always appear in a KPI.
Emerging opportunities rarely announce themselves through a management report.
The market usually tells you first.
You just need to be there to hear it.
That time in the market wasn't an alternative to running the business.
It was part of running the business.
Why I Wanted The Feedback Firsthand
There was another reason.
I wanted the feedback firsthand.
In many organisations, customer feedback travels through multiple layers before reaching leadership.
Sales representative.
Sales manager.
Regional manager.
General manager.
Executive team.
By the time it arrives, the message has often changed.
Not intentionally.
But inevitably.
Details get lost.
Context disappears.
Difficult conversations become softened.
Uncomfortable truths become diluted.
The rawness of the feedback disappears.
The value disappears with it.
It's the corporate version of Chinese whispers.
The customer says one thing.
The organisation hears something else.
I always found it more valuable to hear the feedback directly.
Not because I needed to solve every issue personally.
Because I wanted to understand how customers genuinely experienced the business.
The language they used.
The frustrations they felt.
The opportunities they saw.
The emotion behind the feedback.
Those details rarely survive multiple layers of interpretation.
Yet they are often where the most valuable insights exist.
The real value wasn't what I learned from one customer.
It was the ability to take those learnings and inject them back into multiple businesses, markets and countries.
A problem identified in Shanghai often existed in Sydney.
A customer frustration identified in Manila often existed in Melbourne.
A better customer experience observed in one market could often be replicated across many others.
The specific products changed.
The customer problems rarely did.
Repeatedly, these customer-led initiatives improved retention, expanded wallet share, strengthened margins and accelerated growth across multiple countries and markets.
Most Businesses Compete For Orders
The lesson was always the same.
The customer rarely cared about the things we spent most of our time discussing internally.
They cared about effort.
Responsiveness.
Certainty.
Outcomes.
The organisations that understood this tended to grow faster, retain customers longer and create more value over time.
The more senior I became, the less interested I became in looking at the business from our perspective.
I wanted to understand it from the customer's.
Because customers don't care about our organisational structure.
They don't care about our ERP implementation.
They don't care about our inventory challenges.
They don't care about our internal constraints.
They care about how easy we are to do business with.
Over time I became less interested in owning the order and more interested in understanding everything that happened before it.
How customers made decisions.
How products were specified.
How projects were designed.
How suppliers were selected.
How risk was assessed.
How confidence was built.
The further upstream we moved in the customer's decision-making process, the less downstream competition mattered.
That's where many of the most valuable growth, retention and value creation opportunities were hiding.
Most businesses compete for orders.
The best businesses compete for influence.
Most sales teams are trying to win today's transaction.
The best organisations are shaping tomorrow's decision.
The Friction Reduction Playbook
This isn't a lesson confined to industrial businesses.
It's happening everywhere.
SafetyCulture didn't build a global business because customers wanted digital checklists.
Customers wanted visibility.
Confidence.
Accountability.
The friction wasn't the inspection.
The friction was not knowing.
Xero didn't transform small business accounting because customers wanted accounting software.
Business owners wanted clarity.
Accountants wanted collaboration.
The friction was complexity.
Xero removed it.
Quad Lock didn't become a global brand because customers wanted another phone case.
Cyclists, motorcyclists and drivers wanted certainty.
The friction was risk.
Quad Lock removed it.
Even many of today's leading AI platforms are following the same path.
Customers don't wake up wanting artificial intelligence.
They want answers.
Faster learning.
Faster decision-making.
Less effort.
Less uncertainty.
Less time spent searching for information.
Whether it's ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok or Claude, the underlying value proposition is remarkably similar.
Remove friction.
Create value.
Change behaviour.
Once customer behaviour changes, businesses become harder to replace.
And businesses that become harder to replace often become more valuable.
The EBITDA Bridge
This is why I've always struggled to separate customer experience, value creation and transferability into different conversations.
They're often the same conversation viewed through different lenses.
Reduce friction.
Increase customer preference.
Increase customer retention.
Increase share of wallet.
Protect margin.
Improve transferability.
Increase enterprise value.
The interesting thing is that none of those outcomes start in a boardroom.
They start at the customer interface.
The businesses that consistently create the most value are often the ones that understand their customers better than their competitors.
Not because they have better products.
Not because they have lower costs.
Because they remove more friction.
And when you remove friction:
Customers stay longer.
Buy more.
Refer more.
Leave less.
Margins become more resilient.
Revenue becomes more predictable.
The business becomes easier to transfer.
The EBITDA bridge starts to build itself.
What begins as a customer initiative often becomes a commercial initiative.
Then a value creation initiative.
Then an enterprise value initiative.
The best operators understand that customer experience, value creation and transferability are rarely separate conversations.
They are often the same conversation viewed through different lenses.
Build something your customers would fight to keep.
The EBITDA, enterprise value and buyer interest tend to follow.