“Keep your eye on the ball!” I played Little League baseball growing up. I remember that frequent guidance given for both hitting and catching, “Keep your eye on the ball!”

For business leaders (or any kind of leader) – the ball is the value we provide to customers. There are many things needed to run a healthy, successful organization. All of them grind to a halt if customers no longer find you, your services or your products valuable.

You have to provide value. Even during challenging times.

Never mind everyone else: Make your recovery a V-shaped curve.

Economists argue over what letter the recovery from recession will look like. Will it be a V? A U? One particularly dismal economist predicted an L!

While they argue, most of my clients are currently experiencing a record-breaking year.

Those who aren’t are likely to come through this recession even stronger than they were before going in.

The most important thing for all of them is to stay focused on two things:

1. Providing dramatic value for clients
2. Becoming relentlessly efficient and effective operationally

In this article, I’d like to focus on the topic of providing dramatic value for clients.

Businesses have responded many different ways during the crisis.

But one way has been one of the greatest predictors of post CONVID19 success. That is: How focused and creative were they on providing value to their customers?

Unfortunately, too many of the businesses that completely hunkered down and waited for this to pass won’t reopen. Some will, of course, but they may take a very long time to recover.

I’m watching some of them work very hard to try to get their customers – who they’ve not provided value to for months – to come back.

I hope they are successful. But they’ve made success harder than it needed to be.

Successful businesses stayed very alert to what their customers (current and new) wanted and needed. They often demonstrated enormous creativity in identifying and delivering value.

Here are some of the ways that they did this:

• Convenience: Made products and services more convenient to access.
• Safety: Created safer options – in either how services were delivered or in the nature of the product.
• Meaning: Helped people stay connected to their sense of meaning and purpose.
• Peace & Wellbeing: Helped people feel at peace, deal with anxiety.
• Financial: Helped people find ways to save money or make money while at home.
• Satisfaction: There appeared to be a bump in simple luxuries – small items that felt like a splurge but didn’t break the bank.

Business to business clients focused on:

• Reliability: Making sure their teams were staying healthy and safe and continuing to be “on time” in terms of their projects.
• Creative logistics: Sourcing the materials needed when they were often hard to procure.
• Customer service: Improving or simplifying communication with customers and addressing issues early.

They kept their eye on the ball.

What does your customer need or want most right now?

Think about what you offer from a customer perspective. What do they most want or need right now? What are their biggest concerns or hopes?

The leaders who find ways to connect to those will: A) Build tremendous loyalty with their current customers and B) Attract new customers and expand your market share.

The three primary sources of value:

Nature of product or service: The very nature of your product or service has some level of value connected to it. What can you do to add to it? Remember value is a perception. Often times, meaningful additions to value cost nothing or very little.

Customer services/experience: How do you and all of your staff treat the customer? What is their experience like with you?
Today I received the great news that one of my favorite tailor/alteration businesses is still open. I thought they closed. Why do I like them? Because their customer service is superb.
I’ll be heading over there tomorrow with a stack of unaltered shirts I’ve been suffering with for the last year or more.

Efficiency/ Reliability of Operations: Interestingly, how you run your business impacts your customers. Efficiency, reliability, quality are all results of good operations. Well run organizations find it easier to provide value to customers.

Don’t take your eye off the ball

I’ve watched too many businesses go into survival mode. Too often, when they do, they start reducing the value the provide to their customers.
This leaves a gap for the customer. If you don’t fill it quickly – someone else will.

The fastest way to create a V recovery for yourself is to get creative and aggressive about serving your customers.

Take good care,

Christian

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