How To Attract and Retain the Best Employees, Customers, and Suppliers

Smart business owners know that having the right people is the key to sustained growth and profitability. To flourish as a business, you need engaged employees, loyal customers, and close suppliers.

Getting the right people on board doesn’t happen by accident. You need great leadership with a vision for the future. You also need a pathway to get to that future. Without a pathway, the vision is hollow.

What is the pathway? Innovation.

Innovation is the pathway to the vision of the future. Innovation is how a team co-creates the future. Innovation creates the energy that engages employees, inspires customers, and motivates partners.

What could it mean if your company could be known in your space:

• The best company to work for by current and future employees?
• The best provider by current and prospective customers?

• The best partner by current and potential suppliers?

Being a category leader creates an innovation premium. You get the best talent. You attract the best customers. You work with the best partners. This drives sustained growth and profitability.

I fear that many leaders cast a vision for the future. They work to build a great culture of growth around this vision. However, in the daily work of operating a business and the quarterly demands of hitting goals, the future gets overshadowed by the urgent. Thus, the vision gets lost, the culture gets weakened, and the status quo sets in. Employees become less engaged. Customers become vulnerable. Partners look for additional options to hedge their bets.

The Best Employees

People go to work for a paycheck. They engage in work because of purpose. Companies that engage their innovative employees (particularly those with the Working Geniuses of Wonder and Invention) create energy across the organization that attracts and retains great talent. The best people want to come to work for the best companies.

The Best Customers

Customers buy products and services to get a job done. At this level, they are always vulnerable to change to a different vendor. They change from customers into loyal clients when they discover an innovative company that works to understand their needs and is always improving the way they deliver value.

The Best Suppliers

Every business relies on suppliers and partners to deliver. Just as employees and customers have a choice to engage, suppliers have a choice to truly engage as partners. Companies that innovate attract the best partners and become their favorite customers. This leads to strong relationships.

Conclusion: Back Your Vision with Innovation

The takeaway is simple. Just as talk is cheap, vision is cheap. What’s needed is action. The action to create the future in your vision is innovation.

Companies that prioritize innovation engage their innovative employees in a continual process to come up with new ideas, pilot them, and bring them to market. Without these processes, the company is simply paying lip service to innovation. The vision becomes hollow. Employees settle into disengaged minimal performance. Customers become vulnerable to competitors. Partners hedge their bets.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Darrell Amy is a growth architect, with a unique perspective on how to grow revenue. Most books are written from the perspective of either sales or marketing. Darrell brings both together to help companies develop and implement strategies to grow. He is the author of Revenue Growth Engine: How To Align Sales & Marketing To Accelerate Growth.

Darrell’s passion is to make the world a better place. Serving on the board of several non-profits, he has a front row seat to see the impact of financial gifts from successful businesses. Out of this, he helped launch the Grow4Good movement with the goal of helping 10,000 great businesses double revenue so they can grow employment while also giving back to their communities.

Over the past 25 years, Darrell has been deeply involved in both sales and marketing.  He has worked with hundreds of companies ranging from Fortune 100 organizations to local family-owned businesses. During that time, he’s trained thousands of sales people, most recently creating solutions sales training for a global technology company. He’s started several digital marketing agencies, helping companies implement inbound marketing strategies.

You may also contact Darrell at Leadership Speakers Bureau to schedule him for speaking or leadership engagements.