The Ten Commandments for Business Failure - Don Keough [56]
Throughout my life, in many different situations in many different countries I’ve consciously worked to become interested in the immediate moment and make an emotional connection with the people involved. I’ve consciously tried to block out peripheral issues and noise and listen intently to the person I’d be dealing with—and find what makes his or her particular concern interesting. In just a few seconds I’d find that I could share their interest.
There have been many distasteful situations when I wished that I didn’t have to do a particular task that was facing me. But I would look at the situation and consciously think to myself, “What good can come out of this? What is the redeeming feature here? What is my role to bring it about?” And I’ve generally found something good because I was determined to do so. Even having to fire someone, which is probably the worst task one can face, I looked for ways to guide the person toward a more fruitful career or a more suitable company.
You have to be passionate about doing the job at hand to get the best results possible. The easiest way to develop an inner passion in a business setting is to focus all your mind and heart on four aspects of your world: your customers, your brands, your people, and, finally, your dreams.
Make an Emotional Connection with Your Customers
Remind yourself every day as to just what the customer is looking for, expects, wants from your company. Is it a product? Is it a service? Is it an experience? Is it help, care, advice, expertise? Maybe it’s all of these. Maybe it’s different things for different customers. But constantly do your best to think like those people out there who are going to pay you for providing or doing something. It is so easy to lose sight of the customer, to think dispassionately about an amorphous mass called the market or a market segment.
There are, except as statistical abstractions, no such things as market segments. There are only people. They have faces. Visualize your audience. Visualize specific people and think hard about just what you’re going to do for them that day. For years I had a photograph in my office depicting a woman in her thirties pushing a loaded shopping cart while holding on to a crying three-year-old and with an anguished look on her face. The caption read “This is your consumer.”
With the Coca-Cola Foods Division and later with The Coca-Cola Company itself, I would often stop at a supermarket or a fast-food outlet and just listen to shoppers or patrons. Ad agencies would describe prototypical customers for us, giving us lots of statistical data on their preferences and their lifestyles. But from time to time I just needed to hear their voices. I just found it necessary to develop some emotional connection, some passionate attachment to those I wanted to serve. I wanted to care about that lady, that man, that family. I genuinely wanted them to have a pleasant experience with our products.
Make an Emotional Connection with Your Brands
I fell in love with everything I ever sold. Next to Mickie, my children, and grandchildren, the most passionate relationship of my life involved the brands I was privileged to represent. It was Coca-Cola for decades and today it’s the Allen brand and Allen & Company.
And while I was not always successful, I wanted to further protect, strengthen, and enhance them. If they were new brands, I wanted to nurture them and build a strong platform for them.
A brand or a brand name is the most powerful force in business. Without it, you’re just dealing in commodities and anyone can come along and carve out a share of your business. But with a good brand you have a weapon to defend your business and a foundation on which to build the future. If you’re selling tissue, you’re just selling something that lots of people sell. But if you sell Kleenex, you have something special to offer.
There just is no substitute for the solid brand. This is driven home again and again in so many ways. In 2007, the power of the brand was demonstrated once more in a study run