Saturday, July 21, 2018

Caring for others pays off

Americans use more than 500 million drinking straws daily, enough to fill 125 school buses. That figure has appeared in stories by USA Today, CNN, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Fox News and even The New York Times. You might have also read recent articles about Starbucks and Marriott banning plastic straws. 

It's deeply human to want to do good.

Want to hear something crazy? I have learned that there are better ways of selling than selling.

I learned from trial and error that if I treat my clients as transactions and not as relationships, I would get one sale, but not twenty. If, in contrast, I treated others the way I wanted to be treated, I learned that they actually wanted to do business with me more, they trusted me more, they were more loyal to me.

The basic question is this: would you prefer to do business with someone you like and trust or someone you don't like and don't trust?

I'll say this simply: long-term relationships based on genuine caring is the financial engine that makes cold, hard, cash. This is true for relationships with customers, coworkers, stakeholders and partners.

My COO met with the team recently. The first and only question he asked was "What can I do to help you?"This really floored everyone. When was the last time someone asked you what he or she could do for you, and meant it?

Caring for others. It means not just putting others first, but also thinking from their point of view - what they think, what they need and what they want.

After all those years in leadership, I came to realize that the only way I was going to succeed was by building long-term relationships through caring for others. Nothing works better in the short term than intimidating the hell out of people and coercing them to do exactly what you want. Of course, you can't be too concerned about your reputation, your brand, your future, your credibility or the loyalty of the people around you. This is the playbook of the bully boss. 

Over the long term, however, things are different. If you lead with caring for others, people will follow you forever, wherever - and you will be remembered as a person of greatness.


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