Customer Loyalty Isn’t Really a Secret

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Loyalty to Your Business

“I learned from Mr. Wrigley, early in my career, that loyalty wins and it builds friendships.
I saw it work for him in his business.”
Ernie Banks

Loyalty to Your Employees

In yesterday’s post, we talked about building employee loyalty. We emphasized investing in them, building relationships with them, focusing on growth, focusing on giving loyalty, focus on empowerment. When we focus on what we give to the employee of today then most will give loyalty in return for however long they are with us. Some won’t, no matter what we do. That’s the risk we take.

Loyalty to Your Customers

How is it any different with our customers? We HOPE to build customers for life. The reality is that most will leave us at one point or another for a variety of reasons. Some may abandon us for the lowest bidder. Some because what we provide is no longer necessary for them; they have outgrown us or simply no longer need what we offer. That said, building customer loyalty is still possible and could be boiled down to this simple statement:

Treat your customers like you treat your employees.

The same things we focused on to build employee loyalty make a difference to your customers as well.

Customers are interested in doing business with people they believe care for them, can help them, and can be trusted. They more than a product from you, they want a relationship. Treating your customers as your friends takes the relationship beyond the exchange of goods and services into something more meaningful, effective, and profitable. If your thought is “well I wouldn’t want to be friends with my customers!” then you either need to change customers or (most likely) change YOU.
Customers want to be treated with respect and regard. They, like employees, want to feel that they are important. That their contribution counts. That they make a difference in your life.
Customers want you to help them grow. Whether you help them grow their business, grow their profits, or grow them; customers want what you provide them to add value beyond the product or service they purchased. They are looking for you to look out for them and help move them closer to their goals.
Customer are looking to be empowered by you. It makes anyone uncomfortable to feel totally dependent on someone else. It makes them feel helpless. If you teach them to develop enough knowledge and ability to make intelligent decisions and provide input, you make them feel in control and loyalty will develop as a result. My family doctor has worked with me enough to where I can ask intelligent questions. He welcomes my questions and input. We make treatment decisions together. He makes me feel in control of my healthcare. That’s why he is still my family doctor for 15 years.

Your Actions

How many of your customers would consider you to be their friend? How would they define that?
Think of your best customers. What can you do TODAY to show appreciation?
How can your empower your best customers to deepen your relationship?

Why Aren’t Your Employees Loyal?

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Loyalty Is…..

Loyalty Generations

loyalty - Boy Scout

Technically, I am a Baby Boomer, although I am right near the end of that generation and in some ways identify with Generation X‘ers as well. So call me a Boomer X. I mention that because early on, Baby Boomers were taught what the previous generation shared with them in terms of work and loyalty. You left school, went to work for a company and stayed with them your entire career (at their discretion). Very rarely did you have any control over what role you filled, whether or how you advanced, how you grew, when you retired, etc. You were expected to be loyal to the company at all costs. Very rarely was that loyalty returned. Some organizations rewarded loyalty by returning loyalty to their people, but most focused on punishing disloyalty and showing very little appreciation for those who were loyal. One of the reasons I identify with Generation X as well as the Boomers is that Generation X started to reject that. Generation Y and Millenials even more so.

This topic is also covered in the Ah-Ha! Moment of the Week!

Changing Loyalty Landscape

The landscape of what loyalty means in the business world has changed. Most people don’t stay with an organization more than about five years before they move on. You can attribute that to poor work ethic if you wish, or lack of loyalty; but the reality is simply that today’s worker refuses to buy into the one-way street of loyalty. They expect loyalty to be a two-way street. If they are loyal to the company they expect some loyalty in return. Since as a manager or business owner you will almost inevitably have to hire at least some people from Gen Y, you must change your thinking to follow that theme. Change your focus on what you expect out of loyalty. You have to be willing to commit resources to help somebody become better at what they do with the knowledge that they most likely will be with you forever and may eventually take what they have learned from you and go somewhere new. That’s the gamble of investing in people, but the alternative is a bigger gamble with consequences even more significant if you lose (and you will). So think in terms of how you can maximize your investment over the short term and long term. If you can get somebody up to speed, maximize what they can produce for you, and maximize their potential over the time period they are with you, then it’s a win-win.

Encouraging Loyalty

So here’s some tips to help you along.

Focus on Relationships — Building relationships with your employees. Understand their desires, understand their dreams so you can help them move towards that. Remember the three questions you must answer for them are do you care for me, can you help me, and can I trust you.
Focus on Growth — Invest in your employees with formal training, modeling, mentoring, and providing them with challenges to push them out of their comfort zone. The more you can help them and move them closer to their potential, the better they are going to produce for you.
Focus on Empowerment — Equip them and authorize them to take the steps they need to take to produce for you.
Focus on Communication — Communicating with them at all times. ALL TIMES!
Focus on NOW — Forget about forever. Work on building loyalty for the time they are with you, allowing them to give you the best return while you are giving the best to them.

Here’s the Bonus

When you invest in your employees and give them time, resources, training, caring, and influence – show them loyalty – then many of them will be loyal in return. Not all of them, maybe not even most of them. But the ones who count. Remember you are looking for the golden ones anyway; the ones who will yield greatest returns for you. You are mining for gold. As Dale Carnegie says,

“Developing your people is a lot like mining for gold. You have to move a lot of dirt to get to the gold. But you don’t go looking for the dirt, you go looking for the gold.”

Your Action

What will you do today to begin looking for the gold?
How can you best invest in your employees for the short and long term?
What are you willing to give up to reach that?

Dream Your Way to Productivity

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Daily Productivity

Wave a stick around and you are bound to hit a pinata full of productivity tips somewhere on the web. Everyone has their special tips on how to make your day more productive as an entrepreneur or small business executive or simply as a worker bee. Some of them are quite good. I am especially a fan of Helen Raptoplous (also called Helen Rappy). She provides practical, easy to apply steps to manage your day more effectively and increase your productivity. When you can get more out of yourself in a day, whether working for yourself or someone else, you will be more be productive. You will achieve. You will get noticed. And you will be in demand as a result.

Dream to the Next Level

Dreams — http://www.dreamstime.com/future-look-stock-photography-imagefree90202

It’s been my experience that the ones who are most productive are driven; and they are almost always driven by a dream. They have a vision of who they want to be, what they want to do, how they want to add value to others.

When you feel that you have something special you can offer people in this world and it can make a difference in their lives and yours, you are more inclined to look for ways to be more effective about it.

No doubt about it, living your dream creates a new world with new possibilities and leads to to find out how to best share it with others.

That’s not to say that the dream alone is sufficient. You still must focus on daily growth, learning more about what you do and how you do it. You must learn to be intentionally productive. Many times we are “accidental achievers”; things get accomplished and we are not exactly sure how. What we want is to not only achieve our desired results, we want to know how we got there so we can repeat it.

Start that Dream

So, if the best way you can be highly productive is to work to realize your dream, then take a look at what you are doing today. Ask yourself these questions:

What am I doing, small or large, to work towards my dream?
What one thing, my 1%, can I use to grow today?
What will I do tomorrow to build on that?

Why Your Work and Your Mindset About Work Matters

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Work and Motivation

“It is the working man who is the happy man. It is the idle man who is miserable.” –Benjamin Franklin

It’s a sometimes popular thing to complain about how much work we have to do. Or the type of work we have to do. Or even the fact we have to do work

at all. “Man, I got so much work to do, I don’t know when I’ll ever finish!” “Wow, I’ll sure be glad when the work is done!” We have the wrong attitude about work and it can be hazardous to our employment outlook and our mental health.

Made to Work

The truth is that we were designed for work. Our bodies, our minds, everything about us is designed to toil and sometimes sweat. Some work with their hands, some with their heads, some with both. However we work, we were created for it. Work benefits us as much as we provide benefit through the work we do.

And the type of work doesn’t matter. Someone who labors at farming or construction or janitorial services provides obvious benefits to their people or organizations they serve. So does someone who manages those functions, or even consults with leaders to help them get better results. The key is to recognize that someone is benefiting from the work you do. I am reminded of a TED Talk from Mike Rowe (Dirty Jobs and an Eagle Scout) a few years ago. In it, he talked about some of the dirtiest jobs he shadowed and participated in. The common thread he saw was that the people doing that work were almost always happy. They went about their job whistling and went home tired but content. (view about 10 minutes in).

Work Benefits Us

Work provides benefits beyond the paycheck. Beyond what we earn, work benefits us by

Providing a sense of purpose and self-worth
An avenue for creative expression of ourselves
Focus on others
Development of social skills and contacts
Development of new skills
Opportunity to direct our giftedness to the benefit of others

I realize that not all those benefits are provided to everyone in every job; but that’s more a factor of the job chosen than the job itself. Or perhaps even more to the point, it’s a factor of choosing NOT to find the benefits rather than the benefits not existing.

But overall, the function of where we spend at least 40 hours of our 168 hours in a week (roughly 25%), should and potentially can provide benefits that extend past the printed slip of paper (or direct deposit) we receive regularly.

It helps make us what we are and shapes our identity.

Work Crisis

The challenge we face in a time of high unemployment is that for many it takes this potential fulfillment away. We have young adults fresh out of college with all the ambition and even arrogance that comes with being a college graduate who quickly lose heart when they find that the perfect job is not sitting on the other side of dais waiting for them. We have people 50 and over who lose jobs because of cutbacks who are deemed unemployable because of age discrimination. All have something of value to give, yet do not have a place to share that.

The result is that frustration builds, malaise sets in, and even the most powerful speech by Tony Robbins or Zig Ziglar can make an impact.

Forget the Economy. The only saving grace for it is that we have to get people back to making a contribution, whether they are 25, 55, or 75. When we are making a contribution, our self-esteem rises, our confidence surges. When we are confident, we are more likely to spend. Consumer spending boosts the economy. A rising economy benefits everyone.

Did we just solve our problem?

P.S. If you are one of those jobless in the economy, don’t let yourself sink into the abyss of self-pity and discouragement. Take at least some of your time each week as you search for employment volunteering in your community. The social relationships developed and the opportunity to express yourself will keep your spirits up for campaign, while providing a sense of contribution to your community. I know, it can seem like you are wasting time you should be spending looking for a job, but in the long run it will give your a better outlook and more positive attitude so you can make a better impact in that interview. And it shows you are a person who gets things done and doesn’t just sit around idle.

Why Survival Mode Won’t Help You Survive

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Focus on Survival

You see it and feel it out there. It was panic for a few years. Many organizations, particularly small business, watched the numbers on the economic recovery and bought into the doom and gloom of quasi-authoritative prognosticators. They decided that “yes, Chicken Little, the sky really IS falling!”

Panic.

A 2010 monthly report from the National Federation of Independent Business reported that businesses were panicking. Severe cutbacks. Layoffs, even laying off productive people, simply because we have to spend less. Not spending money on things necessary to thrive. I am always reminded of that line from the movie Ghost Busters:

“Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!”

But never to fear, things are getting better. According to the latest report, businesses have advanced from panic to simply negativity. In other words, no longer doom and gloom, just the gloom. Business owners and managers still don’t feel very good about the economy. The result is

Only a VERY SMALL PERCENTAGE of businesses are adding employees this year.
Very few project adding employees
Very few think sales will go up
Most don’t expect the economy to improve.

Side Note: that’s not reality based. According to Economic Expert Sean Snaith of the UCF Institute for Economic Competitiveness, while economic recovery is happening, even though it will be slower than what we have experienced in the past. And things will be looking up starting as early as the second half of 2013.

Surviving and Not Thriving

How are businesses reacting to all this? By staying in survival mode. Focus on nothing but keeping themselves afloat. Bare bones.

Big Mistake!

There certainly is something to be said for survival. It’s the first order of business. If you don’t survive the now, there’s not much to look forward to in the future.

The problem with only being in survival mode, however, is that it practically guarantees you will not make it past the short-term. As things gradually get better (and they will!), new opportunities for businesses of all kinds will emerge. Opportunities that will require quick action and quick results. Opportunities that will require businesses that are agile and equipped to move on those opportunities.

In other words, businesses that are PREPARED! You must be ready not just with the right equipment and supplies, but with the right people. You need effective leadership, not just management. You need effective teams who have been developed to be productive and work together. If leadership is not prepared to see and exploit opportunities, they will pass you by. If your teams have not already been developed past the initial phases of team formation and are ready to hit the ground performing, you will not produce results on time and opportunities will be lost.