When you’re next updating your training curriculum, consider adding Marketing 101. And not just for your new marketing hires – for everyone.

This doesn’t mean that everyone needs to be capable of doing market research and performing customer segmentation analysis, but it does mean that everyone in your company should understand that a business doesn’t deserve to exist unless it’s alleviating the pain of a customer at a price that the customer is willing to pay.

As an entrepreneur or an executive, this may not seem like rocket science. If you stopped solving your customer’s problems, they’d stop paying you and you’d go out of business. Case closed. However, it’s not as apparent to your Director of Engineering or IT.

For a moment, think about how your IT, HR, or Compliance organizations would be different if they saw themselves as outside business service providers with inside information. If you took a top technology or outsourcing service provider and gave them the information that your internal teams have access to, what would they do with it?

Optimally, your internal service organizations would have their own marketing team to analyze customer needs and develop new and innovative products to improve business performance – but we know that won’t happen anytime soon. The next best thing is to ensure that a marketing mindset is at the forefront of everyone’s mind, from the C-suite to the mail room.

The definition above is purposeful in not stating that you are obligated to deliver on their expectations. A customer with a contract in-hand can force to you to fulfill your legal obligations, but (most of the time) employment, investment, and purchasing are at-will. By focusing on the spoken and unspoken needs of the “customer” in each situation – even when one is not obligated to do so – one can access the true value of a relationship.

By way of example, whenever I’m making a purchase from a salesperson that might be making a commission on the sale, I always make it a point to ask if he or she works on commission. While most people would say that I’m the customer in this picture, I look at the salesperson as an equal customer. Without fail, it completely changes the dynamic of the relationship and I end up getting better service. There’s no obligation, but I certainly benefit from catering to their needs.

For an employee and manager, the typical model is for the employee to meet the needs of the manager. Consider the inverse – having the manager understand and cater to the factors that can make the employee most productive and satisfied. After all, the entire company hierarchy is only in place to allow the front-line employees to deliver the value to the customer, so rather than look at the value chain as employee > management > customer, a more true picture is management > employee > customer.

This perspective can unlock tremendous improvements when used in tandem with traditional process analysis methods. While process improvement focuses on ensuring that each step of the process is efficient, identifying the customer in each process transaction and designing the interaction appropriately can ultimately ensure process effectiveness as well.

In general, we plan to focus on the intersection between three key areas: design, human behavior, and business. Why these three areas?

Fundamentally, business is the process of creating something of value that a customer wants and is willing to pay for and delivering that value where, when, and how the customer wants it. Once you adopt this perspective, it immediately becomes clear that the center of the universe becomes the perception of value in the mind of the customer. If you understand the fundamental drivers behind human behavior that make the customer “tick,” it becomes easier to uncover the optimal way to design and deliver your product or service.

Whether we use Apple’s famous “1,000 songs in your pocket” ad campaign for the first iPod, or Palm’s realization that their true competitor was a paper and pencil (and not other electronics), the focus on the customer’s underlying motivations can unlock tremendous value for your company in the marketplace. In our line of business, sometimes a new executive wants us to remain “invisible” – we play the role of the background advisor to help him or her succeed in a new and challenging role. Other times, an established group needs us to roll up our sleeves and just make a problem “go away,” no matter how visible our presence is. Other times, the entire reason we are hired is to make our presence known; leadership wants people to think twice about the way things are done and consider outside perspectives.

If we confused the reason why our clients wanted us there in the first place, our project would have a very small chance of success. I’m sure it’s the same in your business.

Once the fundamental customer needs are clear, the interaction between the customer and your business needs to be defined, which is what we call business design, or service design. What are the points of contact for your customer throughout the product or service lifecycle? How do they want to buy, where do they need you, and how involved should your relationship be? If you’re an electric utility, is your job to silently provide your customers with reliable power, or is it to partner with them on managing their home’s electricity? It’s critical to uncover customer expectations and design your business accordingly.

And finally, after you understand what your customer wants and where, how, and when they want it, you’re left with the challenge of profitably delivering on the customer’s expectations, which we’re all too familiar with. However, if you can successfully maintain a focus on the underlying customer needs and design considerations, it provides a consistent platform to reassess your business strategy to improve profitability and maintain focus as markets and technology change over time.