I think it’s fair to say that we all wish for customer loyalty. You know, that kind of loyalty that no matter what, we know that the customer will choose us over any other of our competitors. We try to create this loyalty by giving our customers good deals or even have weekly, monthly, quarterly or whatever amount of time, specials to make sure that they keep on choosing us.
These methods are not bad, but they’re not that great either. Simon Sinek teaches us in his book, Start With Why, that these methods are a form of manipulation in trying to create that loyalty amongst our customers. Now, it’s important to underst and that this doesn’t mean you are a bad person for doing this, it just means that we do not fully underst and how to create true, unbridled customer loyalty.
In his book, Simon Sinek talks about what he calls, The Golden Circle (Please see diagram below). The outer circle represents WHAT we do as a business, the second circle represents HOW we do what we do, and the third circle represents WHY we do what we do. So many businesses underst and What they do and How they do it, but when the question of Why they do it, it all starts to become fuzzy. That’s because we always work from the outside in, it’s easier to answer what we do and how we do it. It’s not so easy answering why we do it. If the answer to why we do it is to make money, well, you will never create loyalty. Making money is a result, it’s not the WHY.
Let me give you an example using the film company Walt Disney. A marketing message from them, if they were like every one else, might sound like this:
We make great movies.
They are well produced and excellently edited.
Wanna watch one?
It’s not a very compelling sales pitch, but this is not the real Walt Disney. They underst and their WHY. Their mission statement is, To make people happy, and because they know this, their sales pitch sounds like this:
Everything we do is about making people happy.
The way we make people happy is by making,
Producing and editing films of the highest quality,
That we know people will enjoy.
And we happen to make great movies.
Wanna watch one?
It’s quite different now right? This is what will keep bringing people back, time and time again, to watch their movies. This is what will create that loyalty among your customers. Not just your external customers, but your internal ones too.
Your friend,
Raynor