That takes more than just taking care of your Customer, although doing that to the extreme is required.   It means doing it in earnest, for one.   It also means taking the same interest and care in your Employees.   It means embracing the Change and maybe accelerating it instead of fighting it.   It means taking risks and not being afraid to initiate this new approach.   Do these really well, and you’re adhering to what Guided Star calls the Guided Tenets.  

It’s a big topic, but let’s examine that just a bit more.   Take care of the Customer.   Pretty much that might mean switching places with them.   Take the risk out of the transaction for them and maybe take some exposure on yourself.   Find out what they want that they’re not getting and give it to them.   Let’s face it, we all love a good deal, and more and more, we recognize it when we see it.   

But it isn’t just about cost.   Treat us like we aren’t morons, like we are smarter than the smarmy advertising normally slathered over us.   Be easy to do business with.   Make the product reliable and stand behind it with a guarantee.   Invest a bit in ease-of-use, the human interface, and ergonomics.   Be accessible without voicemail loops from Hades.   Do these things and you’re going to get our attention.  

Especially if it comes through as sincere.   That consumers are increasingly savvy is a given.   We can smell fake philanthropy.   Or the “we’re in your corner” bit that’s only a skin deep marketing cover.   I can guarantee wonders with a Corporate heart transplant, but a marketing program alone that’s not backed up will never fully deliver.

That would bring us to your Employees.   Get in alignment with your Employees just like you have with your Customers.   It’s required.   It’s the Employees that I interface with as a Customer most likely, and the smile on their face, the level of interest in helping me, and their attitude that will set the tone for the Customer experience in most cases.   Being fairly paid, cared for, valued and having some input into the business is all most Employees want.   If you don’t think that they can make or break the business, your nuts.   A motivated Employee acts like it is their business and cares for it like you want them to.   That you give them a paycheck is not enough.   The hidden cost savings that a happy Employee can impart are enormous – the great untapped resource.  They are the ones that will see first where the Change can happen and lead you to greater opportunity.   If you invest in them.

One of the simplest ways to build that motivation and common interest with your Employees is sharing the wealth.   It is beyond my understanding that the majority of workers are still paid hourly or salaried.   Smart compensation plans would at least include some sort of bonus based on Corporate performance for every single Employee.   The separate article, Compensation Rules! explores this in more depth.

Now you’ve got your Employees bought in and participating, making the experience fully enveloping for the Customer and already you’re well on your way to outperforming your competitors.   Now make it complete by re-inventing the business again.  

Harnessing the Change factor to work for you is a bit like seeing into the future, but it can be done, if only in small increments at first.   It is important to understand that having done the above, having given to both your Employees and your Customers, you’ve placed yourself into position to be on the receiving end.   The process unfolds quite naturally then.   You see, you’ve practiced your listening skills to get where you are.   And now, your newfound partnerships feeling mutually invested, will tell you much of what you need to hear to see how things can further progress.  

A conversation on the range of how Change can work for you is for another discussion.   Suffice it for now to say that the breadth of variance is considerable.   It may involve a total restructuring of business processes, or the more minor tweaks involved in accomplishing the attitudinal shifts alone could complete the transformation.   Either way, any business that has not invested significant time and energies into investigating the potential for Change is criminally negligent.  

When the Change Comes

Corporations should be aggressively thinking through these future scenarios, and tapping outside points of view and feedback as well as those inside.   For when the Change comes to your business, if you’re not leading it, if you’re not surfing that wave, then the chances are good it will overtake you.

“ Whaaat?   Business has faced many challenges and changes before, and met them.” you want to say.   Sure, but in every way, the pace has changed too.   And this revolution will be led by the Customer.   And when the Change is offered to them, they’ll take it.   With a speed and decisiveness that has yet to be seen.  

This is where the earnestness comes in.   If it is a small incremental change, which is largely all we’ve seen so far, the Customer reaction is equally tempered and possibly impermanent.   But when we step forward with the real deal, and it is perceived for the Change that it is, not only in how business will be done but the sincerity behind it, then we will see the case study they will be teaching in the business school of tomorrow.  

Presented a compelling and complete package, the Customer will move, and will remember who Changed the game.   That will bring a Customer dedication that is the opposite of the “finicky” label used today.   So, competitors will try and adapt.   They’ll copy.   Reluctantly in many cases, too late in most.   And the effort, half-hearted as the majority will be, will easily be seen for what it is.  And Consumers are more than ready, willing and able to vote when given a true choice.   Therein lies the enduring strength.   Your Customer is ready to be as dedicated to you as you are to them.

It will start slowly.   Indeed, it has already begun with some.   But, a few years hence we will look back and see that this early part of this 21 st Century was the inflection point for the dawn of the Enlightened Business, where the personality, values and actions of the Corporation become as important as what we have known as traditional Marketing.   Does this mean that marketing, image and packaging cease to be important?   Not at all, but you can note that surface fluff by itself will be increasingly less effective.   So what role does Marketing play in this new landscape?   Why Marketing is the natural Leader, the spokesperson to guide this evolution in business thinking.  

Marketing will confirm Customer desire and represent it internally, the beginning to this transformation.   That doesn’t sound as radical as it is, but it is a long stretch from the pretend psychologist that it plays too often today.   Modifying Corporate behavior to these principles is no small task.   Today, we are more inclined to attempt to change Customer behavior.  

Having achieved this, then, Marketing must become fluent in the Change.   Blending input from Customers and Employees with prowess in Technology and Business Processes, and spiced with a touch of Vision, business can accomplish the Change and reach its full potential.

Everything has Changed.   Soon, we will get it and adapt.   For the ones that do it sooner and more completely, the rewards can be astounding.   The potential lies dormant for the most dramatic business upheaval ever seen, should it be brought forward quickly.   It is heartening to be able to forecast this, but it is the playing out of one Universal law.   For to get, you must first give.

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