Adrian on Ideas for Business Growth

Last week, I got a call from CEO of WinWeb, fellow blogger at The Small Business Blog and friend, Stefan Töpfer, about a blog post (I’m the CEO, Sorry!) that he recently wrote about an experience that he had had with one of his customers.

Now, Stefan interacts with his customers on a daily basis and makes it part of his role as he feels it is essential to understanding his customers and the issues that they face. In the post, he explained that on a couple of calls he explained that he was the CEO of the business and this was met with shock and consternation and that he was left feeling like he had to apologise for being the CEO.

What I think is interesting is why some of us think that CEOs (or, even, senior executives) don’t deal with customers? Is that because that’s what we’ve got used to or is it because we don’t think we’re important enough?

Recently, I’ve been reading and thinking a lot about communities and their application in business. This goes back to Robin Wight’s talk at the Autumn 2010 Likeminds event entitled: The Future’s Bright, the Future’s Social.

And, more recently, my friend, Matthew Needham, across at The Big Red Tomato Company posted: Are You Building a Tribe or a Community?, a guest post from Yolanda at RedHotMomentum.

Both of these, amongst others, got me to thinking about how and why we might want to build communities in business?

Starting with the why, there’s a lot of talk about how building a community is a great way to help:

A little while ago, I was sent a review copy of Guy Kawasaki’s book, Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions. Following that and after various via bits of email correspondence and travel coincidences, I was able to meet Guy in London to ask him about the book and that is the topic of the podcast. In our discussion, we talk about being enchanting, what it takes to create enchantment, the book writing process and find out what change Guy really wants to create enchantment around.

I agree wholeheartedly with Guy when he states in the book that learning how to create real and meaningful relationships with your customers is the key competitive skill that will set you and your business apart in the coming years.

Originally, I trained as an economist (forgive me!). However, recently I saw the video below which I thought was fantastic and encapsulates the debate and the difference between the Keynesian and Hayek viewpoints about how we should manage the economy: Top-Down or Bottom-Up.

Note: I must thank Chris Brogan who brought this video to my attention in his post: I Prefer to Learn Like This.

Boring, you might think. But, bear with me a second as I think this is really interesting as they have made a brilliant video that starts to explain this debate in the form of a rap video. It really is inspired.

Check out the video and then come back and I’ll tell you why I think this is important for business when it comes to customer experience.

Back? What did you think?

Recently, I was in London visiting a client, when I saw this article in The Evening Standard: There’s no calling time on ‘Spoons’ Mr Cool.

In the article, Simon English talks about an interview he has just done with Tim Martin, Chairman of JD Wetherspoon’s, who have just opened their 800th pub 32 years after Mr Martin opened his first pub in north London in 1979. Even though they have been opening pubs up at a rate of just over 2 a month for the last 32 years they are one of the best performing pub and hospitality groups in the UK. One of the reasons is that Mr Martin is a king of Swimming against the tide to help you stand out. According to the article: