Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Comply or Inspire? It's in the Order...

There are two approaches to solve the following:

The best way to make sure a dealer treats customers right.
The smartest approach to ensure customers migrate from your old software platform to your new one.
The most effective way to get employees to do a typically unexciting task.



You can use compliance or you can inspire.

Want the dealer to care about the customer?
Show the dealer what the customer goes through and demonstrate the dollar value of a customer. Or you can enforce a process and only reward the dealer when they conform.

Want to have your customers migrate to your new platform? Make your new platform so exciting they're beating down the doors to get it or stop supporting the old one and make their lives unbearable.

Want employees to do an important, but unthrilling task? Show them the value of that task and celebrate it or punish those who don't perform the task by eliminating their positions.

Ideally, it's best to inspire. It's fun, it leads to things beyond what you expect, and it's a nice thing to do. But, if inspiration doesn't work, compliance is another option and while it's not warm and fuzzy, it can be effective.

The key to this: inspire first, then if necessary, force compliance. Doing the opposite, demanding compliance and then trying to inspire, doesn't work.

Barry LaBov
LaBov & Beyond
www.labov.com
LaBov Sales Channel
PB&J Newsletter

2 comments:

  1. Great points Barry. It sounds like you read "Switch" by Chip and Dan Heath. I love the concept that change occurs when both the elephant (emotion) and rider (logic) are inspired.

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  2. BK, I have not read "Switch" but it sounds interesting. It make sense that both emotion and logic need to be in sync or the message (and all hope) is lost. Thanks for the insight.

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