Print This ArticleIf you treat your customers as your friends and help them grow their business, you will benefit from their success, says George F. Brown Jr.
In 1970, Walt Kelly had his famous comic strip character Pogo use the phrase “We have met the enemy and he is us” in an Earth Day poster. Since then, we’ve seen it applied in diverse settings, from discussions of information overload to the road system to our nation’s challenges in Afghanistan. It is one of the universally applicable truths, and it applies to the most difficult leadership challenges faced in many companies.
Every year, the Conference Board surveys CEOs to rank their most important challenges. In 2010—and in many earlier years—the challenge on the top of the list was “sustained and steady top-line growth”. We believe Pogo’s message provides an insight relative to this challenge. “We” aren’t going to provide the answer, at least not the whole answer. The firms that try to address their growth challenges on their own aren’t going to be successful. The firms and leaders that look outside of their walls for solutions are the ones that we will read about in a few years in articles about companies that “get it” and are rewarding their shareholders.
We recently published a book on growth strategy with a simple and explicit message: overcome your growth strategy by helping your customers overcome theirs. The title of the book, CoDestiny, reflects that message. And we’ve seen it in practice over and over. We’ve interviewed thousands of executives over the years about their suppliers and in the process, asked them to tell us a “success story” involving a supplier. Almost every one of them had a success story ready to share—and most of them had many. None of these success stories involved suppliers that cut their prices by a nickel or figured out how to quit showing up late with deliveries. What they involved were suppliers that helped them to grow their own business, to reach new customers, to deliver a superior product, to move up the “Good-Better-Best” spectrum, or to get to a critical competitive price point by taking costs out of manufacturing or logistics or warranty or some other costly process.
In other words, the success stories involved suppliers that helped their customers grow. They created value, and in the process captured some of it for themselves. The solution is with “them”, not just with “us”.
