In Part 2 of Loyalty - Loyalty Starts With People, I suggested that loyalty could not be bought; that loyalty needed to be earned every day through relationship; that without loyalty to your self and the experience gained from self loyalty, you probably won’t have the experience necessary to understand the concept. I also quoted John F. Kennedy - "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."
What is loyalty?
According to my Webster’s College Dictionary, loyalty is a state of, or feeling faithfulness. Faith is well known in the religious context and from following religious rules such as the Ten Commandments. In North America, we live primarily as Christians, under the doctrine of Christian rules many of which have now been scribed into our secular constitutions and laws.
What is loyalty to self?
To have loyalty and faith as Christians, we must subscribe to learning about, understanding, following the habits and teachings of, and honoring Jesus Christ. To have loyalty and faith in our selves, we must learn about and be true to ourselves and how we can be the best we can be.
It seems me that our relationship to our self must be a nourishing and supportive one in which we develop our mind, body, soul and be true to the type of person we want to be.
Loyalty to self also means treating yourself like you want to be treated. Christianity says do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Let me add to that: “Do unto yourself that which you want others to do unto you”.
Understanding the concept of loyalty to self also causes self reliance and builds the necessary understandings why others will give you loyalty. There’s nothing like first hand experience to build understanding. Much follows from the Chinese proverb ”I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”
If loyalty is an illusion, it may be because we are not being loyal to our true selves as individuals.
In connecting loyalty to faith, I used Christianity as an example. I did not mean to ignore other religions. Christianity is just the religion I’m most familiar with. Christianity is also a major pillar - belief, faith, ethics - of Western Society confirmed through the Treaty of Nicaea in 325 AD uniting the Roman Empire and the Christian Church.
Jesus Christ is known as the Prince of Peace. But what of business in this peaceful paradigm? Does business practise peace? Most books I read on corporate business consider business as war, or at least competition. These books write about defeating the competition and using military style tactics. Is this peaceful?
How can you be Christian in your religion and use warlike practices in your business and business relationship? How can you expect loyalty if you are not going to use the practices of peace?
I believe that small business owners can be peaceful if they are true to themselves and to their beliefs. The Sales Processes that I have suggested in earlier articles all emphasize relationship, dialogue, understanding and helping. What can be more peaceful?
Peace is about loyalty to ourselves, to human well being, and to our relationships. Peace starts by awareness and self awareness and builds with practise as we ”become the change we want to see in the world” (Gandhi) and as we practise our religious faiths not just teach them and try converting others.
Loyalty to customer
A single sales transaction, no matter how relationship oriented, probably won’t inspire long term loyalty or repeat business without follow up. From a business point of view, the relationship sales transaction acquires a lot of information about the customer and over time about all your customers. What you do with that information can create interest in your business and at least give you the ‘first foot in the door’ when the customer want to buy something or is talking to a friends about products-services that your business has.
How do you create, pass on, or get passed on ‘word of mouth’ information? What do you with all the accumulated information from customers and elsewhere from yourself and your staff? Does it get lost in the shuffle? Can it be put to good use? These are marketing questions. Marketing is about getting and keeping customers, and I will cover this topic in the next set of articles.
When was the last time you telephoned a customer WITHOUT trying to sell him-her something or to respond to a complaint? If you never contact your customers other than for a sales call, how do you expect loyalty? Why do you expect a relationship?
Loyalty to Employees
We live in a ‘free country’. Why then do so many businesses treat their employees not much better than paid slaves? As long as the relationship is largely one way (i.e. pay for work or pay for hours put in), you are unlikely to have loyalty. Your employee will leap at the next best opportunity that comes along.
What can you, as owner do? Not much unless you establish a relationship with the employee. That relationship needs to be based on dialogue - a lot of listening - and asking the employee how you can help them - much like a Relationship Sales Process.
Helping employees achieve their personal goals (indeed helping them to think about their personal goals) creates a partnership that will translate into more customers for your business. It’s funny how most businesses look at their employees from a COST perspective. But consider the value of a relationship-marketing oriented employee from a REVENUE perspective.
Big business attempts loyalty through benefits and salary. It considers employees as a resource not a partner. That’s why these companies have Human Resource departments. These departments are not about people; they about filling positions. That’s hardly relationship.
Small business owners have the opportunity to build one on one partnership with their excellent employees. These relationships will help you expand or franchise the business. These relationships will give you needed reliability and a consistency of excellence that will be profitable and enable you to delegate responsibility so that you can have a balanced life.
What stops us from actualizing and partnering with employees is fear. The fear that we will somehow lose control and lose business.
Future articles:
Partnering with employees
The Marketing Plan - Getting and keeping customers
The A to Z of Small Business Sales Loyalty Part 3 Loyalty to Customers Employees and Self - To learn more about this author, visit Norm Tucker's Website.
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