9 STRATEGIES
FOR 2016
By Jim Sullivan
Y
ou can’t build a pyramid from the top down. A house
without a foundation will not stand. And any business
without fundamentals firmly entrenched and dutifully
executed can wither and shrink as small as the period that ends
this sentence.
Strong businesses build their brands on The Basics and
today’s competitive marketplace requires us to be unflagging
in executing the fundamentals daily. So what are the critical
building blocks of successful businesses in 2016 and beyond?
Besides luck, pluck, nerve, heart and capital, here’s my list of the
essentials:
2016 Issue 2 |
THE
SCORE
40
FOCUS. When companies start strong and
stay strong, it’s because they focused on the
right things. (Being focused on the wrong
things can be more detrimental than having no
focus at all.) Focus is not just“clarity,” it’s about
inspiring a shared vision. Focus is not just knowing the destination, it’s following the roadmap. Focus is not just“wanting
to win,”it’s the willingness to prepare to win. Focus is not just
being committed, it means being disciplined. What do the best
tenants focus first on? The things they can control. Not the
things they can’t. Make the things that won’t change – quality,
people, culture, training – ever stronger, ever better.
BUILD STRONG TEAMS. Everything starts
with hiring. We must have the discipline and
commitment in place to assure that only the
most dedicated and most passionate and
most talented people are allowed onboard.
Otherwise we put weighty (and unnecessary) burdens on our frontline and
multi-unit supervisors, forcing them to
under-lead and over-manage. We don’t
build “business,”we build people. People
build business.
SERVE BETTER. In case you haven’t noticed,
the top-rated customer service organizations are now online companies like Amazon
and Zappos, not traditional brick-andmortar stores with a face-to-face presence.
What happened? For one thing, these online companies
anticipated and resolved 90 percent of their customer service
challenges before customers visit the site. By investing in a
complex infrastructure, FAQs, built-in suggestive selling and a
no-constraints mindset and makeup, they can almost guarantee a smooth experience – providing you’re not a Digital
Alien. But brick-and-mortar operations like ours are dependent on a Freudian Smorgasbord of people and personalities
for service delivery, not the mathematical algorithms (and, it
should be pointed out, a willingness to self-serve) that characterizes Web customers. The thing is, the internet is digital, but
people are analog. To build your customer traffic, first understand that guests don’t want to be treated like customers,
they want to be treated like people. Have your customerfacing team excel in empathy and situational service; this
is the connective tissue of guest engagement and heartfelt
hospitality.