Human beings fundamentally desire to have the work we do matter and make a difference. As I’ve been posting these past few weeks about employees and building “winning teams” I was particularly struck today by the post below from Seth Godin. There is a nice correlation here… Have what you do be about serving your customers, and create a “win-win” for both your company AND employees! Do you love your customers? By Seth Godin
There are two ways people think about this:
We love our customers because they pay us money. (Inherent here is customers = money = love.)
We love our customers, and sometimes there’s a transaction.
The second is very different indeed from the first.
In the first case, customers are the means to an end, profit. In the second, the organization exists to serve customers, and profit is both an enabler and a possible side effect.
It’s easy to argue that without compensation, there can be no service. Taking that to an extreme, though, working to maximize the short-term value of each transaction rarely scales. If you hoard information, for example, today your prospects will simply click and find it somewhere else. If you seek to charge above average prices for below average products, your customers will discover this, and let the world know. In a free market with plenty of information, it’s very hard to succeed merely by loving the money your customers pay you.
I think it’s fascinating to note that some of the most successful organizations of our time got there by focusing obsessively on service, viewing compensation as an afterthought or a side effect. As marketing gets more and more expensive, it turns out that caring for people is a useful shortcut to trust, which leads to all the other things that a growing organization seeks. Your customers can tell.
As a business consultant and coach for more than 20 years, Vicki has helped hundreds of companies realize an appreciable increase in profits, cash flows and sustainable business success. She works with owners and managers to create alignment in teams and to build “cultures of accountability” – a key for building a sustainably successful company! As a business coach, Vicki’s straightforward style helps business owners and managers maintain clarity and focus on what they need to do to reach their goals.