410 | Why It Is Not Customer First If You Want Fast Growth
Customer first is a prevalent thought when you think about growing fast. However, my research with fast-growth companies — the top 1% of revenue growth — shows that customer first is not the path to the growth you want. You have to put your people first if you want them to take care of your customers. Let me share with my research and insight that will shift your company if you let it. Discover why it is not customer first if you want to grow.
Don't miss an episode. Subscribe to Growth Think Tank.
Share the LOVE and TWEET about this episode.
Why It Is Not Customer First: The Transcript
Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.
Why it’s not customer first if you wanna grow your business. I know we’ve been taught that customer first is the only way we can grow our business. That everything is customer first. Our marketing should be customer first.
Our sales should be customer first. But I’m here to tell you from my experience and researching hundreds of fast-growing companies, it’s not customer first that will grow your business the fastest. So you’re probably asking yourself what is it?
Hi, my name is Gene Hammett. I work with fast growth companies work with their leadership and their leadership team to understand growth but also develop new strategies that will activate this growth. One of the core components behind that is getting your people to activate or feel like owners inside the business. That is really what it comes down to. So, I’m talking about this whole thing about the customer first. You’ve probably heard it. You’ve probably read books about it. You’ve probably done everything that you can think of and everything inside of what you believe is customer first.
Now, when you’re in the beginning stages of your business and I mean just an idea, then you wanna make sure you have product-market fit. And it’s customer first. But as soon as you hire your first employee, you’re giving them a chance to help you grow that company.
When you hire 10 employees, 20 employees. I’ve talked to companies that have 70,000 employees and more and every time when you add people to the mix, you wanna make sure those people are actually performing at their highest level. If they’re not activated inside the business, then they won’t serve the customers the way you want them. So, if after all this what I’m saying is it’s not customer first. It’s an actual employee first.
The employee first is a concept inside of companies that I see time and time again. When you want to grow fast, you’ve got to make employees feel like owners in the company. Now, I’ve interviewed more than 300 founders and CEO’s of fast-growing companies and I asked them this one question. What’re more important customers or employees? And you maybe won’t be surprised because of what this video’s about it was 94.1%, yes I did the math on this, that says employee first is the way to go.
Now, this is a hard question. Some people hemmed and hawed, but for the most part, they said adamantly oh it has to be employed first. When our employees feel like they’re taken care of, they’ll take care of the customers. I even interviewed a company like Hilton, the number one great place to work in 2019. Matt Schuyler, the CHRO there, said to me that we have a business model that is about taking care of our employees our team members they call them and those people will take care of our guests. That’s what drives loyalty.
So, you really want to figure out in your business as a leader, are you putting your customers first, are you putting your employees first? I know you can argue with me either way. You can say that they’re both important. But you can only have one first. And I’m here to tell you, it’s an employee first. I write about this all the time.
I recently wrote an article about the truth and lies of the customer first. And it really talks about the three common lies of this. If you’re interested in that, I’ll share it to you when it comes out. But I wanted to create this video to share with you some of my thoughts on employee first. As always, lead with courage and I’ll see ya next time.
Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.
Resources
A QUICK FAVOR
And lastly, please leave a rating and review for the Leaders in the Trenches on iTunes (or Stitcher) – it will help us in many ways, but it also inspires us to keep doing what we are doing here. Thank you in advance!
If you want more from us check out more interviews:
Best Selling Author Interviews
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | https://www.youtube.com/user/leadersinthetrenches
