Intentional Common Sense

In a recent planning conversation with a new client, I was reviewing the CEO’s knowledge of his customers, their decision making behaviors and what drives customer loyalty to his business.  After a series of very information specific questions, the CEO looked at me and realized I was asking him questions that we both new he needed to know the answers to and really didn’t.  When I explained to him why I was asking these questions and explaining why it was so important he knew the answers, he looked at me and said, ”this is great and makes good, common sense.”   My response was, it is common sense and we need to be more intentional about it.

Like most trusted business advisors, little of what I share is actually unique.  I bring my brilliance to clients by the way we strategize and solve for the obvious.  Intentional common sense™ is one of those thoughts I have started to develop.  If it makes such common sense, why do businesses get so far away from it?  They get away from it because they forget to focus on a regular basis those aspects of their business that enabled them to grow and be successful in the first place.  What they start to focus on is the distaster of the day and the bottom line profits and the not the fundamental, common sense activities that sustain effective growth.

Intentional common sense™ focuses on bringing the following into organizations every single day:

1. The growth strategies that have made your business successful.  The tactics and strategies may change, but the culture, attitude, and commitment may never change.
2. Customer centric, customer first communication and behaviors. Your customers continue to buy from you for a reason.  Once you know what that is, give it to them every single time you connect with them.
3. An empowered, informed, and educated team. Like your customers, your business is nothing without an enaged, educated, and empowered team.  Providing them with the tools and resources to work and communicate like a team in concert with and for your customers makes everything else easy. 
4. A focused business strategy designed only on attracting, converting, and retaining the best.  Be it employees, suppliers, or clients an organization only needs to form the relationships that best fit with the company and it values.  The downfall of many organizations is that they don’t have a firm grasp on what relationships work best in their organization, how to find more, and how to keep them once they find and develop them.

Sustainable revenue growth is nothing more than intentional common sense™.  The challenge for many firms is making the commitment to going back to basics and discover how to insert them back into the organization.  Many businesses incorrectly asume that engaging in these basics are costly.  It is just the opposite.  Nothing is more costly than churning customers, losing valued employees, and investing in sales and marketing programs focused around weak markets.  Put some intentional common sense™  in your business and watch everything, including the bottom line, improve!