Almost always I start my maiden conversations with business executives, be they one-to-one or at the group level, as follows.
“What is the purpose of your business?” or, “Why did you start your business in the first place?”
Almost always the response revolves around producing money. I answer that one should perhaps enter the money printing profession down at the national Mint if they are interested in making (printing) money.
Producing a profit is, of course, a given necessity to maintaining a viable, sustainable business however, there is a far greater purpose that matters in this discipline we call business.
So here is the overarching philosophy on a bumper sticker:
The purpose of business is to take a lead and transform it into an exponential number of referrals.
Marketing In Action
The first stage is that of procuring a lead. Someone who genuinely has an interest in utilizing the products you bring to the marketplace.
There is a never-ending number of ways you can generate a lead, from traditional marketing all the way through to the modern digital medium. When it comes to advertising, the combinations and permutations are infinite, and you the smart business leader has a powerful marketing matrix that delivers target prospect to your doorstep.
Seamless Sales
The profession of selling is one of the most important drivers in every successful business (those in the top 5% of their market segment). As is the case with marketing, the way you approach sales in your organization can be, and unfortunately for most companies, a deal-breaker.
Creating a lead is the catalyst for unleashing a clear set of predetermined steps and activities that inevitably lead to a sale. One can have the best office furniture, and well-manicured front desk assistants, whilst making the loudest noise in the crowd. All good. But until you can close the deal by getting your prospect’s signature at the bottom of an agreement, and do this consistently, you have nothing but thin air and fixed overheads that soon enough swamp the enterprise.
So, in a professional sales framework, the second step to exponential referrals is a given.
Operational Potency
Everyone that buys from you does so with the motive of solving a primary, underlying need. All humans tend to move away from their fears and/or propagate toward their aspirations and dreams.
The most successful organizations take their customers by the hand and in turn transform them into clients because they meet these needs better than anybody else in the market. Their aligned business model is tailored to deliver on the promises that were made by the marketing and sales teams upstream.
For many companies, this may seem more than adequate. Well, almost.
Superior Service
There is a small subset of businesses that understand and embrace the power of building emotional bonds.
This group of people goes the extra mile by creating memorable experiences for their client base. They know that it doesn’t take much to reinforce a very high level of care across the board.
Taking it one step further, the most successful businesses “wow” their clients as well as their people. Only then can the internal human asset impart a culture of superior service to their valuable clients.
Growth Becomes Effortless
Imagine how profitable your business would be if you had retained every individual (B2C) or company (B2B) that ever transacted with you? Think about this for a moment.
Now think about what this would look like if your clients had referred on average 2 new leads to your organization. The numbers soon enough become immeasurable.
The important thing to remember here is that, a philosophy of conducting your business in a manner that potentially delivers an exponential number of referrals matters. Why? Because soon enough it will matter.
It matters for the time that you will compress as you move across your life, it matters for the number of people that you will influence, be they your internal team or external market, it matters because your presence and purpose are paramount during your brief journey through eternity.
