I know, I know…. Just another A or B post on LinkedIn….. Can’t you be a little bit more creative? And….. Like most things we face in business and our personal lives, there is no right or wrong answer….. But if you had to pick….. What would it be?

In this case, it is not so much about A or B, but rather just stopping to explore what your business represents by way of product and also what it represents by way of customer service. Far too often in business, we get caught up with growth, driven by being bigger and better than everybody else. I’m not suggesting we should stop going “all in” to be the best we can be. However, what I am suggesting is that we should spend a little more time focusing on the “small is beautiful” part of our business and ourselves because deep down, we all understand the profound effect the simple things in life, like a warm and engaging smile, can have.

A long-standing mentor of mine, Justin Herald, helps businesses with customer culture. What I love about the approach Justin takes, having experienced this first-hand for our team at Sentrient, is that it gets people to recognise the hidden strength within themselves to make a massive difference to our customers just by seeing things through the eyes of their customers and by striving to be the best version of themselves. Yes, it starts with a smile and a ‘how may I serve’ mindset and builds from there.

Now, the purpose of this post is not to preach on product excellence versus customer service excellence. There are stacks of literature and social media feeds on this very topic. Rather, to encourage you to stop and think about what matters most to your business as you set yourself up for the new financial year. I’d suggest some businesses might achieve their financial goals with far less stress and a lot less marketing spend if they instead invested more time and money in their people and measured the growth of engagement and the joy that you can bring your customers when you adopt the smile first, listen second and talk last approach to business. At Sentrient, this is the culture we are creating for our team and our customers, and it certainly makes things all the more fun and fulfilling!

Smile first, listen second and talk last approach to business?

For the record….. I’ll take B every day of the week! Why? When my Barista served me an 8/10 coffee with a 10/10 smile, it made my coffee taste like a 10/10 instantly! Applying simple math, that is, a product quality increase of 25% in the perception of the buyer (me!) with no cost and in the blink of an eye! Just saying!!

Please let me know what you think about this article.

This article was first published on https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/which-coffee-you-drinking-new-financial-year-gavin-altus/