Today's boss is busy with it. A director works an average of 9.7 hours a day and also does business on 79% of the weekend days, an average of 3.9 hours a day, and on 70% of the vacation days, an average of 2.4 hours a day. Hard work is of course great, but are all those hours also invested in the right topics? As a leader, what focus points do you want to invest your time in?
Hold up a lot of signs
Directors have to hold up a lot of signs. They must deal with risk, respond to changing laws and regulations, be alert to technological developments, strive for innovation, and they must pay a lot of attention to finding the right people and creating the right culture.
The most important sign is called growth.
According to an IBM study his successful directors are mainly concerned with finding new ways to grow. They do this, among other things, by looking for new products or services, new business models, pursuing innovations or through geographical expansion.
A small majority (51 percent) of the directors surveyed believe growth is more important than achieving cost efficiency. Long-term growth is more important than short-term profitability. Growth through mergers and acquisitions is booming, but independent and organic growth is still very important.
Grow organically with new customers
One of the ways to grow is to win new customers. Winning new customers is usually a costly process. Communication, marketing and sales are expensive and, all in all, it takes a capacity to gain market share at the expense of competitors.
In addition, a growth plan requires time and execution and success is not guaranteed. Every new customer comes with a hefty price tag, which must be recouped over the course of the customer relationship.
And lose half your customers again
An average company loses half its customers over the course of five years. Knowing that it is five to twenty-five times more expensive to win new customers than to retain existing ones, that's a sad fact. So, after winning new customers, your mission should be to keep them. But how do you do that? What is the key to effective customer retention?
In the classic marketing idea is attention the magic word. If you don't give your customers the right attention, they'll feel like you don't care about them anymore. This lack of attention explains 68% of the churn, as runaway behavior is called in marketing terms.
In addition to the classic miracle cure, attention, there is something else at play, especially for B2B companies. B2B customers are joining increasingly reflect their experiences as private consumers. Their experiences with companies like IKEA, Coolblue and bol.com have formed new standards. They have a lot to do with convenience and good communication. And also with the online performance of those companies.
Are you a construction company, an installer, a cookie factory or a transport company? Then, in terms of convenience, communication and online presentation or online processes, you are increasingly being mirrored to the experience that consumers have with companies. Coolblue is the new standard, no matter what your business is.
One system for performance improvement and customer retention
Okay, now you know what to do and you're going to work to improve your organization so that far fewer customers walk away. To do this, you set KPIs and follow a PDCA cycle to plan, execute, check and adjust over and over again. You do this for a number of years in a row, seeing your organization keep improving and noticing that fewer customers are leaving. You've found the way to structural organic growth. Congratulations!
Of course, the reality is often different. The focus is missing or fading, no PDCA cycle has been set up and people are not on the same page. The improvement process requires a lot of guidance and good intentions are dying due to a lack of implementation power.
A system of continuous improvement requires - no screams - for (automated) process support. Support in which you define exactly what your KPIs are and what measures you take to do so. A system that shows where and when the deviations occur and encourages affiliated employees to make adjustments. A system that connects the entire organization to the process of continuous improvement. And a system that also continuously measures what customers think about it and whether they also experience the intended improvements in the same way.
A smart director uses his KAM manager or QHSE manager to organize the process of continuous improvement and to supervise the implementation. But a really smart director also provides that manager with powerful software that facilitates the process of continuous quality improvement and reports back online embedded customer satisfaction measurements in real time and without manual intervention.
Directors and their KAM/QHSE managers on the road to growth together
ISO2HANDLE creates software for organizations that want to manage Quality, Risk and Customer Experience automatically, continuously and in real time. The software is available as a SaaS solution and is a powerful, flexible and effective tool for KAM/QHSE managers and their directors. More than 750 companies are now making effective use of the ISO2HANDLE solution.
Directors who (together with their Quality Managers) want to get acquainted with ISO2HANDLE in an exploratory way are welcome to open the conversation.
