There is wide variety of reasons why customers crown you king or queen of their domain, not the vendor/seller. From the vendor’s standpoint, you need to quickly identify those reasons and go “Minnesota Fats” as quickly as possible.

Minnesota Fats was a famous pool shark and he never broke the rack without knowing where all of his next shots would be. “Fats” was a lot like the late Dale Earnhardt, a seven time NASCAR champion who was posthumously inducted into their Hall of Fame. Legend has it that Earnhardt could see the wind at places like Talladega and Daytona. “Fats” could also see what did not exist just yet, his last shot for the game win.

For most of us in the business world, we don’t have to possess that kind of acumen. Here’s a simple thought. Find out what the customer wants and give it to them. Duh! A major part of the problem is that most companies simply want to dump what they have on their shelves rather than asking the customers about their needs before even building the widget.

I spoke to a group of colleges and universities that are part of a consortium that develop and share software that help them to navigate through the maze of new problems and issues they now face ranging from HIPPA regulations to processing credit and debit cards to taking on the role of student loan administrators. New requirements fall to them daily, which mean new headaches accompany those challenges.

The biggest challenges that all universities face today are the bulging enrollments that are impregnated by record unemployment and layoffs in the corporate world. People are using this down time to reload their guns and acquire skills that will make them more marketable in the ever-changing workplace.

That’s the good news for all these schools, particularly community based commuter colleges. The huge influx of people is those folks living at home and driving down to the local campus to pick up valuable courses.

The bad news is that these schools have to go virtual class rooms yesterday. They simply don’t have the brick and mortar to accommodate enrollments that have skyrocketed to 125% of capacity in some cases. Moreover, they don’t have the funding and staffing to deal with the overwhelming enrollments.

For instance, demand is higher than ever for the sciences and while virtual classrooms are part of the solution, the fact of the matter is they simply need more lab space for people to pursue these disciplines. That takes time and money. “Minnesota Fats” would have seen this coming.

Had these institutions anticipated this demand, they might be better prepared to have made this transition. The problem is they were so busy filling the space they had that they failed to go “Minnesota Fats” and anticipate where they needed to be. They couldn’t “see the wind” like Earnhardt, who went from 17th place in a Talladega race to victory in the closing laps.

The customer crowns you king or queen. Find out what they need and give it to them. Who is the real customer in this university scenario? If you’re thinking it’s the student, you’re wrong. It’s the employer who is going to hire these wayward students. That’s the real customer. They’re the ones who will crown you.

Forward thinking businesses anticipate the needs well in advance of the problem and position themselves to solve it. In the software world, for example, you must be anticipating the customer needs to be there well in advance. You can’t toss an egg in the barnyard and have it clucking tomorrow morning.

One of the challenges that the consortium of universities have is many of their members already have the answers to these challenges but they are buried deep within their own “silos.” These were their words to describe their challenges, not mine. If university “A” could share how it solved its HIPPA and credit card/debit card compliance issue with university “B” it could save them a tremendous amount of time, talent and treasure.

Working with an existing network of people with the same problems is what associations and consortiums of this nature are all about. Optimizing it into the marketplace is tougher to do. These third party solutions and applications can trim the learning curve significantly and save money. They operate in a mutual environment with mutual problems. There may be deployment issues that range from institution “A” to institution “B” but that stuff is about the process and can easily be addressed.

If the end game here is to get these new college entrants trained to get back into the workplace better equipped intellectually then every step of that process from getting them into the right curriculum to paying for it should be addressed. This is how you protect your existing investment and innovate for the future. You must be thinking like “Minnesota Fats.”