Let go of your sales instincts and be brutally honest about what customers really want from you, according to Steve Deist in Improve Market Access to Unlock Potential.

"Your customers don’t care about how much they cost you; they care about the value you provide them," Deist says.

Market access is the key to unlocking a distributor’s true potential and improving it can drive long-term growth in both a distributor’s profitability and its market share. But it requires an analytical look at customers and opportunities, specifically customer value.

"If we can solve their problems more economically than anyone else, we can sustain high profitability for a long time," Deist says. "If we don’t, we may be able to temporarily gain higher margins through trickery or deception, but sooner or later customers will recognize the disconnect between cost and value."

Grouping customers based on how they act is called behavioral segmentation. And once distributors grasp the concept, the insights can be profound. The key is to let go of your sales instincts and be brutally honest about what customers really want from you.

Read more about taking an analytical look at customers in Improve Market Access to Unlock Potential.