The Heart of Business – Part 2
Making people feel valuable and becoming the go-to business happens above the product level … in the realm of experience. Your good product may be of value, but it can’t make someone feel valuable.
This brings us to an important question … if the ultimate organizational/brand goal is to make people feel valuable, is there a common way to do this? The answer is yes and it’s called servanthood.
Servanthood should not be confused with customer service … it’s different.
Servanthood is proactive, customer service is reactive. In servanthood you go first and you go first without an expectation of a return. You’re doing something because the person in front of you matters. What’s important here is to re-frame how we look at people … they are not a problem, an inconvenience … they are a person … just like you … worthy of being served.
With all that said with respect to experience, experience does not matter if your product is not good. A great experience cannot save a bad product because the customer relationship is built on the foundation of products.
This brings us to what I promised in the Part 1 of this blog, a plan. Here are a few important things to consider to gain access the heart of your marketplace and its repeat and referred sales.
1. Product. Does consistently do what customer’s expect?
2. Mission Statement. Do we use it in interviews to get the right people?
3. Culture. Do we have an environment people want to be part of?
4. Competitive Advantage. Do we know what makes us worth more?
5. Marketing. Does it make an immediate emotional connecting with buyers?
6. Locations. Do the places were people can make a first impression of our business match our price position?
7. Internal Experience. Do our managers lead well? Are they people-trained? Is their goal to make our team members feel valuable?
8. External Experience. Do we see problems as opportunities and train our staff on how to deal with them? Is our goal to make our customers feel valuable?
9. Strategy. Do we annually review our business with a view to the future, or do we spend all our time fighting fires.
