A short motivational/business talk by Brian Tracy arguing that the core purpose of any business is to create and keep customers. He emphasizes customer satisfaction measured by repeat business and referrals, and recommends routinely asking customers (on a 1–10 scale) whether they would recommend the business and striving to earn 9–10 scores to drive repeat purchases and referrals.
I got a question for you. What is the purpose of your business? Now, most people respond by saying the purpose of a business is to make a profit. However, that's not quite correct. The real purpose of your business or any business is to create and keep a customer. If you can create and keep customers in sufficient numbers in a cost efficient way, the result will be a profit. The very first thing that you have to do when you think of any new business idea is, where am I going to get a customer? How am I going to get someone to pay for my product or service? So what is the most important measure of business success? And the answer is customer satisfaction. It means that you create a customer and you keep the customer because the customer is so happy with what you did for them. Sometimes I ask people which is the most important sale and they say, oh, it's the first sale. I say, not so quick. It's not the first sale, it's the second sale. Why? Because you can get the first sale through discounting, through deceit, through all kinds of techniques and methods. But it's the second sale where the customer tells you, you satisfied me so much. You delivered on your promises so much that I am back here to buy again. So next question is, what is the key measure of customer satisfaction? And the answer is repeat business. Repeat business is where the customer buys and buys again and buys again and brings their friends. So the key measure of business success is the customer buys from you rather than from someone else, buys from you again and brings their friends. And this brings us to the ultimate question, what which determines your success or failure in business? And the question is this, and you ask this on a regular basis of your customers. Here it is. Based on your experience with us at this time, would you recommend us to others? Would you tell your friends and your associates, members of your family to buy from us based on the way that we treated you? On a scale of 1 to 10, and here's what we discovered is people who give you a grade like 9 or 10 or will represent 85% of your repeat business and 85% of your referrals to other people. What you have to do from now on is ask your customers in every way possible. How we doing? Did you like us? Did we take good care of you? How could we do it better? On a scale of 1 to 10, how was our service? And if the customer says, well, it was six or seven or eight, what you do is you say, what would we have to do next time to earn a 10 from you? And then orient everything you do in your business to get tens as many times as possible from as many customers as possible, and that will guarantee your success. Sam.
