by Richard J. Rohman, Centurion Systems Marketing and Sales Director
This article has been adapted from a talk given at Securex 2017, and edited for length
In tackling this assignment I
have drawn upon our own experiences at Centurion Systems, asking for input from
key members of our team. In addition I have referred to a number of business
books which I have read over the years and whose lessons about business
resonated with me.
So let me start with an absolute
fundamental in business if you want to become and remain a preferred security
supplier.
Honest and ethical
More than ever today, customers want to deal with suppliers that are
honest and ethical. That means that if you have a problem with a product, admit
to the problem. Don’t pretend you’ve
never heard about it.
We find that our customers are far more understanding if one is transparent about a problem than if you try to
hide it. When you do get caught out, you lose a lot of credibility with your
customer.
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| Centurion Systems Marketing and Sales Director, Richard J. Rohman |
There have been occasions where
you might feel that you are within your rights to challenge a customer over a warrantee
dispute. From our experience, it is better to back off and give the customer
the benefit of the doubt.
At the time one needs to ask the
question “Mr Customer, what would make you happy?” and try and meet, if not
exceed the customer’s expectations. You gain substantially more advantage than
trying to challenge it.
Don’t overcharge a customer just
because you can. There are so many
Social media platforms e.g. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc., that provide customers
with a ready means to air their
grievances.
In the same breath, be cautious
about charging too little for your services; you must watch your operating
margin, but more about this later
Under promise and over deliver
Don’t be tempted to take on too
much and then fail to deliver. This is a death knell for a business.
In the early stages of building a
business, one takes on everything just
to keep going. As the business grows one has to become more focussed. One can’t be all things to all people.
Bottom-line, when you take on
something make sure you deliver on it to the best of your ability and you don’t
fail.
Be ready to go that extra mile
Service, service –service that delights!
The world of consumers is becoming
more and more fussy, more critical and certainly more demanding.
So where, in the past, the
supplier / service provider would pitch their offering at the price that they
wanted and when it was convenient for them to deliver, today the consumer has
all the power and is demanding from the supplier the product that they really
want, at the price that they want to pay, and when they need it.
For many businesses to keep the
products alive as they progress through their product life cycles and head
towards the inevitable period of waning in growth of sales, they have to be supported
with better service. This provides time to come out with the next compelling
product.
In other words, the culture of
giving service that truly delights has to be ingrained within your
organisation.
Where, the operative word is delight,
being that feeling you get, if you have a sweet tooth, of biting into your
favourite pudding.
Listen to the needs of your customers
When pitching to a prospective customer,
it is critical that you clearly understand what they are looking for.
Too often we provide our customers with what we ‘believe’ they require,
or what we are able to
provide them with as a result of the limitations imposed
on us by cost, technology, financial, production or other similar
constraints. The problem is that our
product is often not what the customer is truly looking for. So, instead of focusing on providing the
customer with what he needs, we spend inordinate time and money marketing and
selling our product in a vain effort to “convince” the customer that our
product actually is what they require.
Lack of marketing success and loss of market-share tend to make one think
that price is the “real” problem, and the slow spiral towards reduced
profitability kicks in.
We have to keep asking ourselves the
'relevance question': Is what we are making or selling still relevant, and will
it be five or ten years from now?"
We need to ask it every year,
because if a company loses relevance we no longer add value to customers. We
are vulnerable if we rest on our laurels.
Always maintain excellent communication with your customer
The easiest way to listen to your
customer is to be in constant communication.
Be flexible and adaptable
A company that is flexible and
can execute decisions quickly and effectively will experience success. The
sales environment in any industry is volatile and uncertain. With the constant
threat of new entrants to the market and new products pushing the limits of
technology we need to act quickly and be flexible to change.
There is no substitution for hard work
When trying to make a success of
your business, there is no substitute for hard work. If it was easy and
required little effort more and more people would be running their own
businesses out there, but they aren’t.
As your customers become more and
more demanding and the landscape that we operate in forever changing, it takes
hard work to stay in play.
But working SMART is also key to
success as there are only so many hours in the day and only so many people that
we can afford in our businesses, so we have to make sure we optimise our use of
time and our resources. I am a great believer that as one grows one has to have
the right processes in place so that one only adds heads when it is absolutely
necessary
Strive to deliver world class products and service
What is world class?
Well, products and services that
are ranked by customers and industry experts to be amongst the best of the
best. But you have to make it relevant
for your market. So don’t just copy what a company working in the US would do,
make sure the products and service you deliver are relevant to the market you
are serving.
This doesn’t mean that products
and services mustn’t be excellent, they must be excellent but to the extent
that it suits your market.
Compelling products
You can take an average product
and sell it hard to get it into the market and make it work. Or, you take a
compelling product and the market will come to you.
It is not always that easy to
find or develop a compelling product or service, which doesn’t mean that you
mustn’t start in the first place. But as you grow your business and take on
more products or add more services, strive to make them compelling. Your marketing
and selling of the product will be that much easier.
Differentiate yourself from your competition
I can never forget the time I was
shopping for food in a Malawi food-market, walking along the endless lines of
tomato stalls – each offering a similar pile of bright red tomatoes. One asks oneself,
why choose one stall in preference to another?
To the stall owner, it is no
longer the tomatoes that are going to attract their customer, it has to be
other vegetables they have to offer, a more inviting smile to beckon you or a
tidier, cleaner looking stall.
That is a very simplistic view of
differentiation. In the business world if one can’t clearly communicate one’s
differentiators to a prospective customer, how can one expect them to take
their business from their current service provider and give it to you?
Now you can’t be different for the
sake of being different, you have to think in terms of the value you add to
your prospective customer. Do this right, maximise this for your customer and
you will better guarantee that you will get their business.
Innovation
A rather overused term these days, but nevertheless critical in our VUCA
world.
The winds of change are blowing and change happens faster and
faster. If businesses don’t adapt they
will be left behind.
Innovation has to be encouraged.
It doesn’t have to be radical and totally disruptive (like Uber;
although if that occurs, so much the better), but continuous improvement in
products, service, business processes, techniques, etc., all ensure that the
company is able to weather the storm.
Keep up to date with the latest technologies
The security industry we work in
is probably second to the telecommunications and computer industry in terms of
the pace at which it is changing. As a
service provider you have to ensure that your business and its offering are
keeping up with the new developments, the new technologies so that you keep
relevant in the market and don’t get left behind.
Not only are the products and
services you offer changing rapidly, so too, the way in which you communicate
with the market when making use of the ever growing and ever changing landscape
of digital marketing.
You have to run a sustainable business
Fundamental to being a successful
service provider in this industry is to make sure you run a sustainable
business. It doesn’t matter how wonderful and relevant you might be to your customers
today – it doesn’t help that you are not around for them tomorrow.
Using the term sustainable means
that your business rides through both good and bad times, for some there might
be growth, for others they remain fairly constant but maintain themselves as a
business in a healthy state all the time
How do we do this?
Focus on where you want the business to be
Have a clear picture of where you want to go. Steve Jobs always had a crystal clear vision
of where he wanted to go.
Look beyond just short-term profits.
To be sustainable it is critical to forego short-terms gains,
re-investing continually to ensure that the company has reserves to fall back
on when an idea doesn’t turn out quite as well as was planned.
In setting the right strategy for
your business think about whether what you are planning really matters to your
customer and secondly, as I have mentioned before, does it differentiate you
from your competition.
Get the right people
It is rare to see any business
stay with the original proprietor alone – it will grow and require people to
come on-board.
Don’t ever be too quick to bring
on new people unless they are the right people. To steal from the renowned
business author Jim Collins – you have to get the right people on the bus, the
wrong people off.
In many instances don’t look for
a person with the commensurate skills or knowledge to take on a particular
post, get the person that has the right fundamentals, energy, attitude and
temperament, aligned with the culture of your business. Then you train them to
do the job.
Think about it - it is a whole
lot easier to train somebody to develop a skill than it is to change the attitude
or behaviour of somebody who already has the skill, but is negative, lazy, etc.
Engender the right business culture and values
within the team
You have to start by making sure
you have in place the right vision, mission and values. These become the
bedrock of the company’s culture and the guidebook for how things are done, how
people behave without you having to constantly monitor this.
Every entrepreneur will have a
vision for their business. But it pays to get this written down for everyone in
the team to see and understand.
The next stage will be to put
down your mission statements. Some business gurus prefer to use the word
“purpose” and when appealing to the new millennials that are filtering into
every organisation, they want to understand the purpose of the business they
are joining, how it is going to be relevant to them and their environment.
Finally you have to bed down the
company’s values, the guiding principles that link to almost everything that
gets done in the business.
Get your values right and get
them ingrained within the organisation.
Your people are an extension of
you – empower them to act on their own but with knowledge and values that
mirror your business.
If you as an individual can run a
successful single man show – treating you customers with respect, going that
extra mile etc, then as you grow and bring more people into the fold, they have
to mirror your behaviour. You can’t be looking over their shoulder all the time
to check up on how things are being done. Train your staff properly and
communicate clearly what is expected of them.
So keep pushing the values of the
business. If done effectively these values guide all the relationship decisions
and systems in the company without the need for rules.
Staff, the greatest asset
Put your staff first, then they
will look after your customers as kings
The adage that employees are a company’s greatest asset remains relevant
today. Without good staff a business
will never thrive and become truly successful.
However, business is a two-way street and therefore good staff don’t
exist in a vacuum. Employees of choice
tend to exist when there is an Employer of choice. Being an employer of choice means that the
top management of an organisation has to:
o
Set the example.
o
Constantly discuss the vision, mission and
values of the company.
o
Remunerate people fairly.
o
Train, develop and mentor people.
o
Show staff that they care for their overall
well-being.
o
Make their staff realise that they ‘belong’ to
an extended family and that their input matters.
Performance Management
Measure the performance of your
team and keep giving them feed-back
While you are small, managing
performance is really managing yourself and if you are self-starter then this
is no problem. Your first team members will hopefully also be swept up by your
energy whirlwind and the things like performance management will happen on its
own. Understandably you are in constant communication with this first group of
staff members.
But things change as the
organisation grows and you move further and further away from the coal-face.
You have to make sure that people know what is expected of them, whether they
are meeting these expectations and be given guidance on how to improve and move
to the next level. In a nutshell performance management.
Don’t try and develop the perfect
system from the outset – it’s all down to rhythm, those regular informal and
formal communiques between you and your managers and they, in turn with their subordinates.
Bottom-line, the majority of us
like strokes or recognition and to grow and move on in life. We are not on this
planet to remain stagnant. So the business environment has to support this and
the better it is at it, the greater the chance that key-people will stay and
help the business grow.
Leadership
Fundamental to running a
successful business and keeping relevant in the market is to have great
leadership. I would like to share some insights provided by a business author
called Bob Rosen in his book Grounded. He is a stern advocate that healthy
leadership stems not from what one does, but who one is as a human
being.
Leaders who are truly healthy in
all senses of the word are evolved human beings and extremely effective
leaders”
He has established three factors
/ truths
- Who you are drives what you do
- Who you are is grounded in your
healthy roots
- Healthy Leaders build teams and
organisations that outperform
Richard Rohman is CENTURION's marketing and sales director. An engineer by trade, Richard is known for his incredible work ethic and keen business acumen, honed over 30 years of playing an integral role in CENTURION's development as a world-class brand.
Richard Rohman is CENTURION's marketing and sales director. An engineer by trade, Richard is known for his incredible work ethic and keen business acumen, honed over 30 years of playing an integral role in CENTURION's development as a world-class brand.
