Over the years I have had the opportunity to hire a lot of people for my business. Many of those hires have been great… but some have been failures.
This week, I watched a short video of a talk given by Frank Levinson in 2001 when he was CTO and Chairman of Finisar Corporation. In this video, Frank talked about why he hired ‘nice’ people. People that are ethical.
You can watch that video here:
I totally agree with Frank that it is more important to hire people that are ethical and pleasant to deal with rather than people that show a lot of talent and who have an ego and make a workplace environment toxic.
When I’m hiring people, yes, I am interested in their skills and their experience, but I’m more interested in their work ethic and their attitude. I can always train someone who has great personal qualities who is willing to learn, but it is difficult to impossible to change someone’s attitude.
My team is my most important asset. Not our clients. If I take care of my team and they enjoy working in my business, then they will take care of the customers.
I tell them this also. I tell my managers that my role is to make sure they feel supported, respected and appreciated. I tell them that as leaders, they need to make sure that their team members feel that about them also.
If everyone in my business enjoys working with each other, then they will stay long-term, and will do great work. Our customers will feel the culture and will want to continue doing business with us. We will be able to grow the business over time and have great success.
Another point that Frank Levinson mentioned in his video was how he handled products being returned to him by customers (i.e customer complaints). For many years they never questions the returns, and sent the customers replacements.
It’s the same way I do business, and for the same reasons Frank mentioned.
I want to ‘weld’ customers to me.
What I try to do in my business is not to think of every customer and every transaction in terms of how much profit I am making. If that is my focus, the business won’t do well.
You have to think in terms of, “am I that valuable to my customers that they will never want to look elsewhere?” That can only be achieved if you are focused on customer satisfaction.
Yes, all businesses need to make a profit, and your profit margins should be healthy, however, some clients are going to be more needy than others, or sometimes you are just going to fall on hard times.
When that happens, don’t make the mistake of offloading your problems onto your client base.
Recently, I heard of an accountant increasing their already hefty fees substantially. I know of the personal circumstances of that accountant; that they are in a lot of hurt financially due to large amounts of property debt and the interests rates continuing to rise.
It seems to me that the accountant is using their business to prop up their bad financial decisions. I can guarantee you that they will start losing clients soon, and then their situation will be even worse than before.
I have noticed that those who have been in business for a long time are the best to deal with. They have a lot more experience in their field, and they tend to charge a lot less than their younger competitors.
Younger people tend to charge more for their services because they have a lot of financial obligations and big plans for the future. Older people tend to charge less because they are established and have no financial hills to climb… and they tend to remember how much people were charging decades ago, before inflation raised prices to current levels.
Have you noticed the same thing also? I’d love to hear your thoughts.