How Did I Get Here? Simon Davis, Managing Director, MarketDeveloper Ltd

Simon Davis, Managing Director, MarketDeveloper Ltd

1. What is your current job title/position? What other positions have you held throughout your career and how did you get started in the Customer Management industry?

I am Managing Director of MarketDeveloper Ltd and my current position is trying to avoid getting legged over by suppliers, customers, the competition, the government et al. I’ve held many positions in a number of businesses in my career and they all add up to much the same except some positions are more supine than others. I got started in Customer Management by mistake – I thought I was running a software house back in 1995 and it took me 4 years to realise that I wasn’t.

2. What do you most enjoy about your current position?

The sense of relief when the legging over’s finished, surprise when I’m not getting legged over at all and the euphoria of closing the odd deal now and again.

3. Is there anyone in the industry you particularly admire or who has had a big influence on your career?

Unfortunately, there are many more who I have little admiration for but if admiration means you don't actually have to like them, then Mark Benioff comes to mind. Someone who I do admire, was in the business of Customer Management both in the raw and in the broadest of senses, and I like, is Sir Tom Farmer, he of Quikfit fame. The most unpretentious wealthy man I’ve ever come across.

4. Can you can tell us about things which have had an impact on your career - training and qualifications etc?

I learnt very early in my career, that if you thought your boss was an idiot and if you thought his boss was an idiot then there were only ever two options; get to the top as quickly as possible or, more probably, get out. The other rule is; the older you get, the less you know.

5. What has been your greatest achievement to date?

Last year it was to finally rid myself of one of my worst habits after half a lifetime of trying – I stopped turning my left hand upwards when ski-ing down a mogul field so now my ski pole behaves itself with aplomb instead of going everywhere. And when I had done that I realised that it simply re-emphasised all the other faults so I must move on to correcting those.

6. Do you have any advice for aspiring customer management professionals?

Avoid using 3 letter acronyms.

Never think you are bigger or better than you really are.

Under-promise and over-deliver which is, of course, what I do all the time. Which leads me to my last piece of advice…look at what people do, not what they say.

7. What do you think are the key issues facing customer management professionals at present?

While there doesn't seem to be a concern over where the next pay cheque is coming from the future beckons and where there is no real professional structure, commoditisation follows. Some aspects of Customer Management grew out of the maturation of Direct Marketing and just see what havoc the price/thousand mentality has wrought on that market.

Meanwhile there is a distinct possibility that, unless the business / profession delivers in a tangible sense that it will disappear up its own distending orifice. That very swelling is being caused by the amount of hot air about the subject blowing around. It has a bit of the feel of CRM in the late 1990’s,or TQM or BRE or JiT or, or... Delivery 1st, 2nd and 3rd.

8. What's your overall view of the current CRM/customer management market place?

There's a lot of product around branded as CRM/customer management that is no such thing. And is there a marketplace that you can as clearly define as such? I don’t come across ‘Customer management’ professionals as often as I should. I come across IT and Marketing people. That’s probably because companies outside the stratosphere don’t have many Customer managers (please see 7. above)

9. In your experience, which companies do you think are good at CRM, customer service etc, and which have a long way to go before they make the grade?

We used to be really good at CRM – when the grocer, the baker and the butcher used to know my Mum as Mrs Davis and knew that she had a dodgy knee and was she going to Hunstanton for the Coventry week again this year? Have things changed fundamentally?

We know and have ways of assimilating this in one system for millions of people. Therefore we can handle the relationship in a more sensitive way. But systems aren’t sensitive and I don’t think there is enough sensitivity to what a customer really wants. We are definitely getting there but, the closer we get the further away the goal will appear because the world of reality works like that!

10. Finally, what are your goals and ambitions for the future?

I’ve still got a major problem with knee angulation ski-ing in deep powder…