Make It Easy!
What is the top priority of your business?
Generate revenue by making sales? Make the world a better place? Provide a livelihood for you and your employees?
Nope. Nope. And, you guessed it, nope.
The Answer: Make it Easy!
The top priority of ANY company is to make things easier for:
- Their customers
- Their customer’s customers
- Their staff
- Their suppliers
This applies no matter the size or industry, including yours!
This is the secret behind Amazon’s success.
They pursue “easy” every day and in every aspect of their business.
Amazon pioneered one-click shopping – what could be easier than that?
Everything must be simple. This applies to how their manufacturers package and ship products to the user experience on the website and the handling of returns.
Amazon puts the focus of every new idea on how it would be valued by a customer.
IKEA Gets Onboard the “Easy” Philosophy
I think just about everyone has had their own personal story of frustration in trying to put together furniture purchased from IKEA!
IKEA recognised this and in 2017, IKEA purchased TaskRabbit, a platform that connects their shoppers with people who can help them put together their IKEA furniture.
It was a strategy to make things easier for their customers.
In a press statement released at the time, IKEA CEO Jesper Brodin said, “In a fast-changing retail environment, we continuously strive to develop new and improved products and services to make our customers’ lives a little bit easier.”
7 Staff and a Dog Called “Fletch”
Smaller companies can jump on board the “make it easy” bandwagon as well.
Since 1994, Baja Bound Mexican Insurance Services, Inc. has made it very simple for American drivers to purchase Mexican auto insurance (a requirement if you want to drive in Mexico).
In just 3 easy steps, customers can purchase insurance policies online from trusted providers.
Baja Bound has lived up to its commitment to making things dead easy for their customers, and based on testimonials like these it appears they are succeeding:
- “It’s great. I tell everyone I know about it … simple, quick, affordable and easy. Great product, great service.”
– N.L., Phoenix, AZ - “The process was absolutely painless and totally convenient. Thank you.”
– S.S., San Diego, CA - “This was the easiest site that I have been to. Great job and easy. Thanks.”
– A.G., Tehachapi, CA
Amazingly, Baja Bound employs only 7 staff and a dog called “Fletch!”
They are the elephant in the room when it comes to this type of insurance.
And then there’s Costco …
We all know Costco, the second-largest retailer in the world.
We’ve also heard about how retail is dead and brick-and-mortar stores are going extinct.
However, sales and profits continue to grow at Costco.
What is their secret? Simplification.
Unlike Walmart, the number one retailer in the world, Costco only stocks one choice in each product category.
This allows them to get the best prices from their suppliers. They then pass those savings on to their customers.
Costco only has 4,000 SKUs, compared to 120,000 at Walmart.
This philosophy of “making it easy” has allowed Costco to buck the trend in downward sales that other retailers with brick-and-mortar stores are experiencing.
Costco is also known as a quality employer and experiences high employee retention rates.
Why?
Because of how it treats its employees. The company pays the best wages in its industry and offers healthcare, superannuation and other benefits to staff.
The company also makes things easier for employees on the job.
For example, stocking shelves is simple. The warehouse team can take a product directly from the trucks to the sales floor via forklift. This means they don’t have to spend a lot of time and effort unboxing or stocking inventory.
Be Like John Ratliff …
John Ratliff, CEO of the call centre company Appletree Answers, was able to reduce staff turnover to 18% – from an industry average of 110%.
This gave Appletree a 10X advantage over its competitors.
He did this by focusing on making the job easier for his employees.
As an example, the day after acquiring a call centre, the new management team would ask everyone to throw their uncomfortable chairs out the window. Or, add them to a burn pile (if they could secure a permit)!
They would then be replaced with top-of-the-line Herman Miller Aeron chairs, along with new keyboards, etc.
John made the jobs of his employees easier so that they would make their customers’ lives easier!
John not only reduced turnover, he also took an industry that averaged 4% profitability and generated margins of 21.8%. That’s better than Apple’s profitability that year!
He was able to purchase these call centres for 3 times the earnings and then sell them to a company that paid him 14 times the earnings. Every dollar he invested returned $25 back.
Every organisation is capable of making things easier for its customers and employees.
As leader of your organisation, this should be your top priority if you are keen to successfully scale your business.
If you would like help to Scale & Grow your business faster, book a free strategy session here.
Cheers,
Jonathan
