Are you watching the right ball?

Overdue receivables, leaky toilets, unhappy employees, confused distributors: Distractions are a constant in business, yet entrepreneurs are constantly told not to take their eye off the ball.

But where exactly is that ball? Where should you be spending most of your time?

Hint: The ball is not in your court, or office, nor should you be. The best place for entrepreneurs to spend their day is out on the front lines with customers, watching them interact with your products, listening to feedback and asking how else you can help them. This is the art of customer development.

New York entrepreneur, venture capitalist and author Bob Dorf, was in Toronto recently to lead a “Startup Grind” workshop on the art of customer development. Dorf is co-author, along with

Steve Blank, of The Startup Owner’s Manual: The StepBy-Step-Guide to Building a

Great Company. The centrepiece of this 2012 tome is “The Customer Development Manifesto,” 14 points that govern successful customer discovery and sustained growth.

You can dive into this manifesto as deeply as you want, into the murky world of business model canvases, market types and cycle time, but the essence is inescapable — you have to get out of the office.

Dorf aims his advice mainly at technology startups, on the theory most new applications and services need significant re-tweaking before they become vital products and services that consumers will pay for. The authors retooled German military strategist Helmuth von Moltke’s famous line, “No battle plan survives contact with the enemy,” into a business mantra: “No business plan survives first contact with customers.”

This concept isn’t just for startups. In every business, until you know exactly what your customers’ needs are, all your business plans are guesses. This isn’t just about customer relations: it’s strategic planning, product development, continuous improvement, and even risk management, rolled into one consistent priority.

How many customer appointments do you have scheduled today? If you dropped a few committee posts (it’s called delegating), would anyone notice? Particularly if it gave you more time to spend with the people who ultimately pay everyone’s salaries.

Better still, instil this customer imperative in all your staff. Sales alone shouldn’t own the customer relationship. Your product-development people, customer-service leaders, advisers and directors should all be on a first-name basis with clients. You want to spark robust discussions about customers’ pain points so that you dig more deeply into their motivations and create new product ideas no competitor has ever thought of.

And if your team staff doesn’t want to follow Dorf ’s lead, you can always quote a billionaire Canadian entrepreneur. At a speech in Toronto a few years ago, Terry Matthews, co-founder of Mitel, March Networks, Newbridge, Celtic House and 60-odd other firms shared the secrets of his success: “You must be bold. You must work hard. You must be enthusiastic, be passionate. And absolutely, you must go visit the clients.”

Adopting a customer development mindset isn’t something you tack on to an existing business. It changes everything — in a good way. Bureaucrats will no longer determine what products your company sells; artificial deadlines will give way to meeting customer needs now. Employee engagement will grow as your team realizes that at the other end of their job are real people depending on them.

Here are some pearls Dorf shared to get you started: Have a customer archetype in mind What does your ideal customer look like? What do they do, what do they wear, what do they drive? Make any excuse you can to

visit customers “I’d love to see your new office.” “Let me drop that part off myself.” “Why don’t I buy you a coffee?” “Can I pick your brain for a few minutes?” There’s no one way to get to know customers; invent every opportunity you can. If you are looking for capital to grow your business, focus on customers first “Do everything humanly possible to delay your funding as long as humanly possible,” Dorf says. The longer you delay that conversation, he says, the more likely you’ll land the funds you need.