The Customer Comes Second???

Hal Rosenbluth and Diane McFerrin Peters have written and incredible book, titled The Customer Comes Second And Other Secrets of Exceptional Service. It tells the story of Rosenbluth Travel and the ideas that made them a world class organization. I have been known to share it with a marketing representative who expected his teammates to serve and sacrifice beyond their own willingness to take care an associate.

Hal begins, “Companies must put their people first. Yes, even before their customers. There. Now I’ve said it. I know its controversial. It makes people nervous just to hear it, but it works...There is probably nothing we believe in more strongly than the importance of happiness in the workplace. It is absolutely the key to providing superior service. Of course our clients are the reason for our existence as a company, but to serve our clients best we have to put our people first.”

There are huge top down organizational implications to Hal’s beliefs. If you are part of an organization where a significant number feel that their direct manager or upper management in general is not concerned with taking care of their basic needs, problems will surely be common. But don’t underestimate your role as a salesperson in the organization you work for. You may have countless opportunities to make the life of the people you work with better.

In the company I sold with for many years, we sold programs where a team of 3 would follow me into the organization in which I made the initial sale. There were many little things I did to insure my associates life was as good as I could make it. I once traveled about an hour one way to an account to make sure the environment was workable and conducive to my teammates success. Then I made the trip four more times because that same account kept telling me the previously agreed environment wasn’t going to work like they thought.

If I was about to add an account where I was unsure my teammates could make reasonable money, I would sometimes ask them if they wanted to work there. If they got me a reference letter, I took them to lunch. I brought them soda’s on schedule regularly. If I scheduled a program where they had to carry heavy equipment up a flight of stairs, I marked it on my calendar and showed up to do the heavy lifting myself.
I had a bright red rubber stamp made that said, “Team shows up at 1 pm on set up days”. This cured a chronic problem we had where a representative from the account often failed to show up on time to give the team access for equipment set up. I wanted my team to be the happiest team in our entire organization. I knew that if they were happy, it would spill over on the customer they were serving. This would then lead to repeat business in spray cans…. And so it did.