Business Growth and The Engaged Employee

Too many businesses are obsessed with this desire to grow sales instead of an obsession to improve revenues.  The favorite investment of choice for this growth strategy is sales, marketing, and social media.  Invest in new customers.  Invest in new relationships.  Invest in replacing the customers and employees lost because the company did not know how to value, appreciate, or develop the business relationships the already have.  The heck with solving the problem, simply find a different source for income. 

Two recent blog posts caught my attention because they reinforce the notion that CEO’s don’t know how important their existing relationships are (I’m Confused. Why Do Most CEOs Not Get Employee Engagement?)  and their obsession with marketing demonstrates their commitment to investing inefficiently for growth (How to Save a Disgruntled Customer).  In a previous blog post, I talked about the impact of retaining and expanding existing relationships as the key to sustainable revenue growth.  Investments in employee development and customer engagement are the reliable and economical source for revenue growth.  It is not this toss money at sales and marketing mindset prevalent in so many businesses today. 

Regarding customer engagement and retention, Adrian Swinscoe, ”Once you change your mindset to embrace the lifetime value of a customer, to focus on building relationships…the more important it becomes to invest in providing amazing customer experiences. I believe that employee engagement is fundamentally about helping your team members do things that matter, making sure that that they feel valued, that they are listened to, that they are supported by the people around them and that they are, in turn, supported to achieve the things that they and the business want to achieve. The results being a more productive and motivated individual, more effective team, better business results and happier customers.” 

And, David Cancel supports this with “once you change your mindset to embrace the lifetime value of a customer, to focus on building relationships and not just interrupting people the more important it becomes to invest in providing amazing customer experiences.” 

It’s not the marketing magic that will nurture growth, it is the people in your organization equipped and committed to their value of sustaining and supporting and nurturing existing customer relationships.  According to Swinscoe, when it comes to CEO awareness of this, “22% do not understand the concept, 19.2% are not aware of the business benefits and 14.5% are aware of the concept, but do not believe there will be any ROI.”  No wonder customer service has become a lost art in so many companies today and 54% of those people currently employed are looking to make a change – they aren’t valued by the people who need to value them the most!