I was having a conversation the other day with a business owner of a $40M manufacturing/distribution company about what it means to be “All In” with regard to customers…it didn’t start off exactly as I had planned, but it ended with a great quote.
The conversation, like many, started off very well as we talked about his customers. He really likes his customers and feels they are very important to his business…duh! They are important because they spend money on his products and services. This isn’t new…its business.
But then things started to go a little south when I asked…
“When you make decisions about products/services, employees, operations, sales, and marketing, are you making them with based on what would help your customers business the most or what would help your own company the most?”
The answer was interesting…he said, “We really care about our customers and want to treat them very well when we interact with them.” I’m sorry, but did I not phrase the question correctly? I didn’t ask whether you treat them well or like them, I asked if you “built your business around the customer or around what was in your best interest?” There was a moment of silence…now he understood the question.
Some CEOs or Business Owners will admit they aren’t “All In” when it comes to their customers…others prefer to dance around the real question and try to cover it up with how much they care about their customers. This one was the latter.
When I pressed more on what it means to really like your customers he could see pretty quickly where I was going and it was uncomfortable. This is fairly common. After we danced around the discussion for a while, he finally admitted that he didn’t run his business to really help his customers do better in their business but he ran it to grow his own business. He saw the difference…and it while uncomfortable, the light went on!
I share this story because it is more common than you might think when I talk with CEOs, Presidents, Business Owners, and company Leaders. And if you are a leader in your business, I would ask you to challenge yourself and your leadership team to the same question…it makes for a really robust conversation! But I also bring it up because after all of our conversation and discussion, he had a great quote that I applauded him for and wanted to share with you. He said…
“I deeply care about my customers and their success in their own businesses…I just haven’t been able to figure out a structured way to make this happen and give them an experience where they would feel I am “all in” at helping their business grow. This has bugged me ever since running this company. If you have an answer, I’m all ears!”
I have to believe many of you reading this feel the same way..he just expressed it better than I could have said it and kudos to him for honestly admitting where he was with his company. There was an answer for him, Customer Centricity, which was indeed music to his ears!
