Business is all about the people – Part 2

We strongly encourage you to regularly assess how well, or not, your relationships with each group of people involved with your business are working. In doing this, don’t downplay the critical role you also play in your business’ success.  

The purpose of this article, the second of two on this topic, is to provide you with some specific actions you can take to bring out the best in the people not directly involved in working with you in your business.  

Your Customers 

According to the Harvard Business School (“Zero Defections: Quality Comes to Services,” Harvard Business Review, September-October 1990), increasing customer retention rates by 5 percent increases profits by 25 percent to 95 percent.  

How many of these customer loyalty strategies are you using to keep your customers: 

1. Stand for something. If you want loyal customers, you need them to care about you and your services and products. 
2. Use positive social proof to get people to listen to your message. 
3. Invoke the inner ego as most people like things that resemble them in some way. Know your customers intimately and communicate with them using messaging that matches their pains, goals, and aspirations. 
4. Use the words they love to hear, and with the implied promises backed up, your customers will enjoy their purchases more than they would have otherwise. 
5. Create incentives and reduce pain points and friction for your customers so they want to keep using your products and services.  
6. Reciprocity, the art of giving back to your customers, works well on its own but is even more powerful when it comes as a surprise to them. 
7. Deliver an exceptional customer service experience that keeps them coming back. Quality and good proactive communication often matter more than speed. 
8. Encourage your team to spend more time getting to know your customers. 
9. Seek regular feedback from your customers on what is working and not working for them – both from regular surveys and creating feedback opportunities in your and your team’s interactions with them.  
10. Establish a process to review the feedback and work out what changes you and the team need to make to improve the customer experience. 

Your Suppliers 

Supplier relationship management (“SRM”) is an area that you should strive to be good at because it can have significant benefits for your business.  

A very important first step in SRM is to assess and identify your “key” or “very important” suppliers based on both current and potential financial returns and customer outcomes. Having done this, ensure your focus on and investment with them is the top priority in your SRM. Key aspects to consider in your key supplier relationships are: 

1. Show that “you mean business”, be upfront about the type of business you can provide, and suppliers are more likely to listen and want to work with you. 
2. Good SRM is not always about getting the best or immediate bang for your buck. 
3. Be prepared to negotiate on things other than price if this is a sticking point for you or your supplier, as savings on aspects other than the upfront cost of the product or service do add up to reduce your overheads. The art of negotiation is a specialist topic on its own which we will address in a future article. 
4. Be honest and transparent to build trust and be loyal. 
5. Address challenges, concerns, and ideas upfront. 
6. Pay your suppliers on time, every time as cash flow remains a huge challenge for businesses, including your suppliers. 
7. Talk about other opportunities to work together. 
8. Use technologies to improve efficiencies and benefit your supplier relationships. 

Your Family and Good Friends 

Your family and good friends provide you with the financial, operational, and emotional support to help you succeed in your business. They provide a support system to help you manage stress, maintain perspective, and improve work-life balance in the face of the pressures involved in dealing with the multitude of challenges and opportunities in running your business.  

Don’t be afraid to share with them what is going on in your business, there is no need for you to operate alone in running your business. 

Your External Support for your Health and Wellbeing 

Make sure you include in your evaluation how well you are working with any independent people supporting you personally for your health, and wellbeing.  

It is very important for you to avoid the trap of working with them in silos (i.e., focusing only on their area of expertise and involvement) by giving them the entire picture of you and your business to work with. 

“He aha te mea nui o te ao? Māku e kī atu, he tangata, he tangata, he tangata” 

What is the most important thing in this world? It is people, it is people, it is people.