Chapter 10 - The Profile of an Excellent Company

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In this penultimate chapter let’s look at what your company might look like when you train your staff to think like business owners. It will:


Innocent Drinks

A number of companies stand out who are already doing this. Innocent Drinks, the smoothie company in the UK started by Richard Reed and his two fellow co-founders is one such company.

Innocent Drinks has, in the space of five years, become the brand leader in the smoothie drink industry.

What started as three guys with a vision, passion, and drive has become a multi-national brand turning over in excess of £100m within just five years, and is regarded as the leader in its marketplace.

The personality of the founders and the staff shines through in everything they do: in the products they create, their packaging, the language they use, and their overall quirkiness! They give customers something to talk about, and something to laugh about, and to have fun with.

Their products are personified excellence and are true to the values that the founders set, which is to use pure, fresh fruit served with greener than green credentials.

Innocent Drinks is an example of a company that understands the need to make customers love them, to talk about them, and to rave about them.

They understand the need to maximize the lifetime value of their customer. If they were selling only one smoothie once to one person, they would never have so quickly reached the turnover levels that they have.

But it’s because of the brand loyalty, and the excellent standards they strive to achieve throughout all levels in the organization (and by all employees), which thrills and wows customers and gives them something to talk about and to tell their friends about.

Next time the friends, family or business associates of their customers are at the cold cabinet in the supermarket choosing their drinks, Innocent smoothies will invariably leap out at them. Quite likely, they’ll go ahead and reach for that particular brand as opposed to the competitors’, which haven’t created the same story, and who don’t offer the same excellence, or let their own brand personalities shine through.


Marriott Hotels

For me, another company which personifies excellence is Marriott Hotels. It’s a chain I’ve stayed at many times and have never yet been disappointed with.

It’s no great surprise that Marriott is up there as a brand leader because again, the personality, values and the purpose of the founder, John Willard Marriott and his son, J.W Marriott, shine through.

Every employee in the organization understands what’s happening, what the senior leadership of the company is thinking and everybody in the organization has the same high standards, passion, and belief as the founder and his son, the chief executive.

It shows in the high standards of the rooms, and in the way staff have been trained to greet and to look after customers. It shows in the little touches in the hotels which make your stay more pleasant and friendlier.

The hotel is always thinking, ‘How can we make it better for our customers?’ ‘How can we make their stay more enjoyable, so that they want to come back and stay with us again and so that they recommend us to their friends and family?’

These values and beliefs are captured very eloquently by J.W. Marriott in his book, The Spirit to Serve, which I’m sure is read by virtually every employee in Marriott.


Your customers become your greatest sales team

When you develop your company to a world class level where you put your customers’ needs at the centre of everything you do, you give your customers more and more reasons to recommend you. Right to the point where your customers become your greatest sales team, and where they become more powerful and effective than your direct sales force!

Whenever a tradesperson comes round to my house, I always ask them where they get the majority of their business from.

Many of them still run yellow pages adverts, but they say that most of their business comes from word of mouth recommendations.

Recently, Jane and I decided to extend our house and add a garden room to the back. We met with Steve, the business owner of the building company and were immediately impressed with him. It wasn’t just his salesmanship which sold us — what was much more persuasive was what his customers had to say about him. We visited Julian and Emma’s house (two of Steve’s happy customers) and they showed us their recent extension.

Julian works in environmental health, and Emma is an engineer, but they were by far the best salespeople Steve could ever find. They were not highly paid sales staff on Steve’s payroll, but just happy customers, who were proud of their new extension, and thrilled to tell a prospective customer all about it, warts and all!

They told us the good things, a couple of things we should watch out for, but because they were impartial, had spent their own money, and were not trying to sell us anything, they were the perfect salespeople. Ultimately, they were just happy customers making a recommendation.

It turns out that Julian’s sister who lives down the road from him has also had a similar extension built by Steve, and Steve told me that he has sold seven other extensions based on Julian’s recommendations.

Steve can now make that eight with our new garden room.

It is not only tradespeople who rely on word of mouth recommendation. I often ask people in professional services, consulting companies, business coaches and trainers where they get their new business from, and they all say the same. The majority of their business comes through word-of-mouth recommendations. But if they weren’t providing such a high standard of service, that would never happen.


Excellence starts with leadership at the top

It’s important, when considering what an excellent company looks like, to look at the leadership, because it’s the vision and the communication from senior leadership which drives a company forward. Leadership creates a buzz, creates energy, and instils confidence in a team.

Behind all great companies is a great leader who is clear in what they stand for and is able to get their message into the body and soul of their employees, so that their passion can be transferred through their products and services to their customers.

But if your employees don’t understand what is going on in the mind of the leader there is no way that they can transfer that to your customers.

Great leadership resonates through the organization.

Think of Steve Jobs and the turnaround in recent years that he has created at Apple. His visionary way of thinking and attention to design and creativity permeates throughout the organization to every employee so that the products, (the computers, iPods, operating systems and the iPhone) are the most beautiful and of the highest quality they can be.

I’m sure that the majority of Apple’s customers have a sense of what Steve Jobs stands for and believes in, and they know what to expect from Apple. Therefore when new products come out it is an easy decision for them to upgrade their iPod or to buy the latest laptop, because they know it has been designed with passion.

They know it is true to the values which are true to Steve Jobs himself. They trust the leader. But if Jobs had kept that vision in his mind and didn’t disseminate it throughout his company to his employees, then Apple would never be the market leader it is today.


Proud employees

So much about an excellent company is about its employees. Without employees who implement the vision and goals of the leader, nothing can be achieved. In an excellent company you’ll find employees who love what they do, and where work is not just a job but a way of life, a passion, and a purpose.

Their job gives them a reason to go to work each day — more than just to pay the bills. If work was just work for them there is no way they would be able to create the glorious environment that an excellent company has!

Employees in an excellent company are truly proud of what they offer, and their pride shines through and is picked up by customers.

In Starbucks they are not selling just another cup of coffee, they are selling the best cup of coffee they possibly can; to give you, the customer, the greatest enjoyable experience for that brief time you’re with them.

On Virgin Airlines they’re not just another airline transporting passengers from London to New York. They are Virgin Airlines and are proud to wear their red uniforms, and want to give you the most enjoyable trans-Atlantic flight you can possibly experience.

Donald Trump’s hotels are not just hotels, but are the most beautiful and majestic places, which are a result of staff who love to work there.

And even your local village pub can be the greatest pub in the area, because it has staff who love what they do, and are proud of the food and drink they serve. Their pride shines through and because they are proud of what they offer they go the extra mile for their customers. They become more innovative and creative.


JK Rowling — An example of customers who believe and recommend

An interesting example of excellence can be found not in a traditional company, but J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter book series.

The popularity of her books is renowned around the world and her customers’ demand for them is insatiable, with avid fans queuing up throughout the night in all the major cities globally when a new book comes out. This is a clear illustration of repeat buying.

Ask any of her readers if they’d recommend her books and invariably it’s a positive. In fact they actively go out of their way to recommend them.

What however is even more interesting for me is this.

Although I’ve never actually read one of J.K. Rowling’s books —I have seen the films and have seen her interviewed on television — If anybody asked me to recommend a book to them that they would enjoy whilst on holiday, I would suggest they start with book one in the Harry Potter series.

This is astonishing given the fact that I haven’t even read them. Such is the power of my belief in J.K. Rowling and the Harry Potter franchise.

In there, possibly, is the definition of a truly excellent company.

If you can create so much belief in someone, that they recommend your company without ever having used your products or services, you stand out in your marketplace as an excellent company.

But none of that belief in the marketplace would ever come about by just developing your sales staff. It wouldn’t come about by training your sales team in advanced closing techniques, or in matching body language.

It would only ever come about by showing excellence in everything you do, which is down to every single one of your employees being excellent at what they do.


An excellent company

An excellent company is fundamentally a world class company where customers are consistently thrilled and dazzled and wowed by everything that they see.

You don’t have to be the most expensive in your market; you don’t have to be the biggest, but you do have to strive to be the best and to leave your customers with a remarkable experience.

That will never happen unless you have employees in your company (at all levels) who love their work, are motivated to come to work each day, and to try a bit more, to go a bit further and to do the right thing for your customers at all times.

If they lack that passion, desire and energy, and if they are simply turning up each day to collect their salary, then you have zero chance of ever becoming a world-class company and a market leader.

But if you recruit the right staff, constantly train them, communicate with them and teach them how to think like business owners (as opposed to employees), you will very rapidly become the dominant player in your niche market and have customers who buy, buy again, and then do your marketing for you.

You will have a workforce who has become your salesforce.

(C) Richard Parkes Cordock 2008