Your Overlooked Sales Advantage
As a CEO of a business you probably don’t think too much about your corporate culture, but you do lots of things to ensure your marketplace is aware of your products and services. You’re focused on ‘brand awareness’. You want your current and future customers to think of you (and not your competitors) when it comes time for them to buy. At this point, it’s all about what you’re selling. Your product is competitive (but so it theirs), your pricing is about right (but so is there), so all things being equal, why should they do business with your company?
Your corporate culture is your Human Brand.
People always buy from people they like and connect with. Everyone has had interactions where, in the end, they bought from a competitor. And when all else is equal, what nudges a customer one way or the other? Their experience. And that experience is completely dependent upon your employees and how they serve your customers.
Even if they don’t have direct customer contact, a disgruntled or misaligned employee can easily create a poor customer experience through errors, missing work that results in a delay of product or service, or with behaviors and attitudes that negatively affect other employee’s ability to do their best work. All of these things are preventable, but to address each one individually in isolation does nothing to resolve the bigger issue. The corporate culture. Because it’s the culture that supports such behaviors and attitudes, it’s the established corporate culture that allows for poor customer experiences to occur, it’s the culture that allows bad hires, or high turnover, or an increase in customer complaints.
If you don’t want these things showing up in your company, it’s time to roll up your sleeves and get down to the business of your culture.