BUSINESS
A few years ago, we had a badly rotten window frame in the conservatory.
Through a builder contact of mine, I was introduced to a joiner called Tom. Even from the first phone call, I sensed Tom’s enthusiasm for his work and eagerness to understand and help overcome the problem I’d outlined on the call.
He arrived early, so eager to have a look at the work that he turned down any offer of tea or coffee. Because Esther likes to know the cost before we start, I asked him what he thought it might cost to achieve the goal.
His whole response was framed in such a way that he was clearly trying to minimise the cost to me and kept suggesting options that would require less of our cash. When I volunteered the suggestion that I might do some of the work with him in order to learn, he was more than open to that and even offered to teach me some of his craft.
The simple fact that I am writing a blog about this five years later, will give you an indication of how much this man’s attitude to his work and to his customer impressed me. In fact, it impressed me so much, that I went into our company the following week and wrote on the board for all our team to read “Go to give - not to get”.
I started to picture a pump and felt that the business world is mostly set up to pump water in the direction of the business and everything else is engineered around that - even the marketing, which might give an indication of the complete opposite but is also orientated to pump the water - the benefit - towards the business, not the customer.
I began to wonder how the business world had come to be like this and what might change if it was truly orientated, in every way, to pump in the other direction, to see the goal of the business as the genuine betterment of the client, trusting that the money side of things would actually take care of itself.
Because I have run a business for 10 years, I know how very difficult it is to live out this aspiration in reality. I understand the reason most businesses do not do this is that trying to run a business profitably is really difficult – much more difficult than most people think.
So the last thing you feel you can afford to do is focus your attention solely on benefiting the customer - when you feel like your priority is making sure that your business survives, never mind actually making any serious money.
But let’s go back to Tom for a minute. Many people who have this attitude in life, have customers who are so delighted with their work that they are actually keen to pay more for his service than he’s actually written on the bill, well we were at least.
What’s more, we began to think of other projects in our house simply to get Tom back with his enthusiasm and creative brilliance. Sadly, we can’t get Tom back because he is so booked out. In fact, he has been unavailable to us for the last three years.
We would love to be like that as a company - to be so sought after for not just what we offer, but the way we offer it, that we literally would have customers queueing up at our door. We are not in this place, but boy do I see the merits of taking what I now call ‘the highest risk in business’, to keep your priority focused on the service of your customer and their benefit, trusting that over time, your business and reputation will be more than looked after.
I Would love to hear others’ experiences of trying to run a business in this way - has it worked?
