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| Bob Schultek Author of The Gauntlet rschultek@staging.elfin-bead.flywheelsites.com 216-272-4449
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Customers don’t buy your product or service – they buy the benefits your solution promises to produce. The most compelling solutions generate strategic value, a quantifiable financial advantage that stimulates customer growth, paired with a strengthening of their distinctiveness and competitive advantage. These promises cultivate enduring relationships when they are fulfilled.
Delivering what you pledged to deliver is the other side of your promise. Without fulfillment, your promise is a wasted gesture that breeds mistrust.
Your sales team can book a record number of orders, but if your operating teams choke on the influx of business, and can’t deliver what you promised when you promised it, then the record-setting sales effort will generate frustration rather than additional orders. You can demand that your people ship all orders on time, and if they are committed to your business, they will do their best; but consequences will arise, ranging from quality problems to employee burn-out. To give your order fulfillment people, your promise keepers, the best shot at success, encourage them to continuously increase throughput by improving operational processes that boost quality, efficiency and capacity, in addition to cash flow, so you can capitalize on order growth.
To grow a business, equal emphasis must be placed on driving sales and increasing throughput, synchronizing the output with the input. It’s the only way to deliver on both sides of your promise.
When did you last assess your operating procedures with respect to invested time?
When driving Sales growth, which internal constraints could cause a promise to be broken?
