The Heart Of Business

The Heart of Business 

By:  Craig S. Galati

 Recently, I went to a Dodgers vs. Giants baseball game–the second to last game of the season.  When I purchased my tickets, the Dodgers were still in the hunt for a playoff spot and the thought of being in Dodger Stadium, clinching a playoff spot by beating the Giants, was very appealing.

But it was not to be.  The Dodgers dropped seven games in a row to the Colorado Rockies making the game against the Giants meaningless for both teams with regard to obtaining a playoff spot.

Both the Dodgers and Giants had called their minor league prospects up from their respective teams for some big league experience.  I live in Las Vegas, which is the home of the Dodgers AAA ball club and since I am a season ticket holder, I’ve watched these players several times.  The thought of driving from Las Vegas to Los Angeles to see the players I’ve seen all year didn’t excite me.  Not that these players aren’t good, but I wanted to see the big-league stars.

Even though I wasn’t excited about going to the game, my family and I packed up our Dodger shirts, hats, the blue hair and the foam finger and trekked to Los Angeles.  Boy am I glad we did!  The experience of being in Dodger Stadium was incredible.  Every pitch seemed to be import here.  The Dodgers won that game 6-5 on a one-out, run-scoring double in the bottom of the 10th inning.  It was meaningless, yet there was pandemonium in the stands and on the field.  You would have thought the Dodgers had just won the pennant!

What strikes me about this trip to Los Angeles was that the experience mattered.  Being there with my wife and two sons mattered.  There were over 50,000 fans there that night having a great time, enjoying time with family and friends, while the Dodgers and Giants played a seemingly meaningless game.  But to us, the game was filled with meaning.  For some of us, it was entertainment, for others an escape from our daily grind.

Although the game didn’t change the playoff picture, the players, managers, and coaches played like it did.  And that mattered to me.

On the way home, I thought about what this experience meant to me and how it could be translated to business.  That day, several key concepts were reinforced for me:

It may feel small to you but it’s not to them.  The service you are providing for your clients may seem small to you but it’s not to them  Play like it matters, because it does matter.  Clients, just like fans, expect us to show them that they and their projects are important to us.

Clients expect our best.  Clients expect us to bring our best each time we interact with them.  Clients have expectations of us and our firms, and we will be judged by those expectations.  The best way to understand our clients’ expectations is to ask.  And once we know those expectations, it is our responsibility to meet them.

We can create memorable experiences.  We have an opportunity every time we interact with our clients to create a memorable experience, just by the way we act.  Memorable experiences greatly enhance any service or product we sell.  Those experiences can be the differentiator for your business.  Think of some of your most memorable experiences and try to understand what it was about the   experience that made it memorable.  Can you apply any part of that memorable experience to your business?

Joseph Pine wrote The Experience Economy in which he says that great experiences are built upon  great service and great products.   Great experiences are delivered in many forms.  They can be based in entertainment or be educational.  They can help you escape or they can delight your senses in an aesthetic way.  The one thing that all great experiences have in common is that they are remembered.  And that is a great thing in business–providing service that is remembered by your clients.

 I’d like to hear from you: 

• Can you remember an experience that enhanced the service or product you received?

• How do you create experiences for your clients that are memorable and valuable?

• Do you approach your work as if it matters each and every day?

Until next week…

 Craig