How Does Your Business Stay Relevant?

Examine How Relevant Your Business Has Become.

I think back through all the years of my business career and can imagine living almost seven lifetimes.  What about you?  How many lifetimes of business patterns can you examine in your own business career?  A few? I can think of my first set of business patterns.  Let's take a walk through history and examine some of those life patterns.  Let's see how each pattern was able to remain relevant to the business.

In the beginning, I was the son of an entrepreneur who directed me to practice all of these particular things to help out in the family business.  That was my first set of business patterns.  My first job was to deliver the furniture my family sold.  My business life began listening to how things should be done to please the process for attracting consumer sales.  These relevant and particular things were a major part of my first impressions to business leadership.  Please the customers.  That was the bottom line.

I remember being told to hold my hands on the outside of the furniture while I was delivering their new furniture so my hands hit the door jams instead of the customers new furniture.  We were never supposed to make any marks or cause any damage to the new furniture the customer was having delivered.  Scratching the back of our hands was far more desirable than placing an unwanted scratch on the back side of a new piece of furniture.  This was one of my first delivery lessons.  Consumers must be pleased at all costs.  That was the message.  My first lessons were related to the policies of customer attraction.  Look good, act professional, be polite, show ultimate care in the products they purchased, compliment their choice when it was delivered and thank them for their newly purchased items.  This was my first introduction to business relevance.

That was my first life in business.  I was young and specifically taught how to do these simple things.  My current question...how many business leaders continue to practice today this first rule of business relevance?  How many business owners have forgotten this simple step?  How many business models skip treating the consumer as someone very special.  In fact, let's go further into that line of questioning.  How many business models treat their customers as something they would scratch the back of their hand to please?  Is your current business model doing everything it can do to make certain your customer feels special and appreciated?  How far has your business traveled away from being this kind of close to this kind of relevance?  Think about this deeply.

I read the Wall Street Journal daily and I witness thousands of large corporations each month describe how they work to 'take' more advantage of the opportunities they can discover that their customers will be willing to support.  Is this kind of approach the same thing as scratching the back of your hand?  I think not.  These two approaches to customer attraction policies are completely separate scenarios.  Customer service has drifted away from where it used to be.  I see the current treatment of customer service as something quite a bit different than what it used to be.  Customer service has become modified to lower its level of consumer treatment.  It is now strategically designed to protect the energy and cost of the business offering the consumer tolerance of treatment policies.  It is very calculated in the world of business today.  How relevant is this method of approach?  To the consumer, not very.  To the shareholder, very.

I rarely see a business model treat all customer relationships as loyal and special.  When exemplary customer treatment is practiced all of the time, it is extremely rare.  That is exactly what helped my parents, who were self-taught entrepreneurs, to become a relevant piece of early business success in their community.  They began their trek with the consumer treatment well above what anyone could have expected.  Their customers were treated with respect, honor, dignity and expected in all cases to be loyal...even when they were not.  Loyalty was never a prerequisite for treating their customers well.  All customers got treated well.  No exceptions.  Good 'extra-mile' service was not just offered to the loyal ones.  It was offered to all of them.

Does this sound like any business model you shop with in today's marketplace?  I certainly do not see it.  I shop a lot in my travels.  I am rarely thanked for my purchases.  I am rarely given any special extra treatment.  I have rarely been given an extra mile piece of added on service with my routine buying patterns.  I am like everyone else in the confused market place of today, I am just another number.  Business models do not have the time nor the human resources to practice the things of extra effort in today's fast paced markets.  And as a result, those models are no longer relevant.  Where does your business model land on this scale of comparison?  Is it a one or is it nearing a ten?  Maybe it lands somewhere in the middle of the pack.  Maybe it is a five...average.

How does your business stay relevant?

Page two.

Examine The Relevance Your Business Provides.

I have to admit, as time has moved on my parents have softened how they treat their customers so special.  The honeymoon has been long over since their first day of operations in 1969.  In fact, the norm has been reached.  The 'bar' has been lowered in how they treat their every day consumers.  That special bond of extra effort only occurs when the customer exhibits a special respect that warrants the treatment for that transaction.  Otherwise, the extra effort is held back and kept in reserve for those few special customers that come along once in awhile.  Do you practice this kind of 'selective' customer service in your own business model?  Be careful before you answer that question...keep in mind that we all have a tendency to deny how we view what we really represent.  I know I am certainly guilty of this practice.  I have these conditioned patterns I have also developed to hang over and protect my many years of customer dealings.

Conditional extra efforts are no longer a relevant process for producing healthy growth.  Many business models have forgotten this basic rule.  Many failing business models have grown to become irrelevant on the subject side of extra mile consumer attraction efforts.  As a result they slide continuously backwards while keeping up pace to add more energy to wrong practices.  They make business adjustments in wrong areas and expect the consumer to respond more positively.  They no longer remain relevant.  They become lost between toothpaste and fuel stops.  Owners forget who they are and why they can help that consumer feel better about buying stuff.  They become as routine as filling up the tank of gas and being completely shocked at what it costs.  The relevance is gone.  It becomes as mundane as buying toothpaste.

If you have a business model and your future is beginning to watch a diminishing return, take a much closer look at how relevant your model has forgotten to be.  Get serious about what relevance you provide.  Get serious about how you plan for your customers to recognize why your relevance is any better than those who provide the same stuff you do.  Stop being normal.  Stop being cynical.  Stop expecting the customer to earn your respect.  Get off of those terrible habits.  They are the work of skeptics.  Skeptics do not build large successful business models.  Skeptics manage little struggling ones.  That helps them to feed their skeptical perspectives.  In some strange way, they find comfort in that proof.  If you have these tendencies, divorce them.  They are killing your future growth.  Get serious and get relevant.  Take a serious look around.  Is your business model relevant or has it quietly drifted off that path in some strange way?

Get back to becoming more relevant.  Find ways to jazz up your customer service offerings.  Begin the true art of giving out more than what they expect, not what you expect.  Do not make it conditional.  Serve, serve and then serve some more.  If this is not your understanding about how business success works, get out before it eats up any sensibility you still may have remaining in your heart and soul.  In the world of business relevance, the servers will always beat the takers...every single day of the week.  Your daily deposits reflect where your business model finds its relevance.  That is the true scale of what number your relevance reflects in the business model you manage.  You can ask if it is a ten or a one, but your deposits know the truth.  They are the true reflection of how relevant you have become.

How does your business stay relevant?  It must first admit when it is not.

Until next time...