The first Google principle is to give more than you receive. This is simple, yet so powerful – and frankly hard to accomplish unless we are intentional. With all of the craziness in 2020, we all need to give more than we receive. We need to consider others first. We need to change our hearts and minds toward listening and understanding before trying to be understood. For our customers, if we exceed expectations, they will return time and time again without us having to ask them to return. We need to alter the mindset of business from one of greed or “getting” from our customer, to one of giving or providing exceptional value to our customer. Most people are perceptive enough to know when they are being looked at as a dollar sign or a means to an end. What if we transform our way of thinking? What if our real goal in any interaction with our colleagues or customers was to give more than we receive regarding any transaction? Picture a world where our customers really sense that our ultimate goal is to provide them exceptional service and / or products versus the profit we are making from the transaction.
Google demonstrates this principle when they allow a person to perform a search. The Google search engine provides the results to the search. The consumer then leaves the Google platform and goes along their way to another content or offering provider. We all use Google each day to find things we need to understand or need to acquire. The failed business models of the search era would allow you to leverage their search engine, but then served up the content via their own portal. Google did just the opposite. They allow the search to deliver nonGoogle content. Today, they certainly leverage the advertising model, but in the formative years, they sent us to the best “googled” resource.” Now, for this model to be successful, Google had to first create a high value interaction whereby people would return and tell others about the value. Once the community was built, Google could then create and drive their financial model – thus advertising around search. We can learn much from them regarding this powerful principle.
“Give more than you get, and people will return.”
So, don’t hold onto your customers so tightly that they feel like you are squeezing them to death. Give them the opportunity to see the value and make the decision to come back again and again. The open source model, in its pure form is similar, where a product that is created to solve problems is offered to a community at no charge. Now go give! As we count down our Google Leadership series, Edwin Miller, CEO of The Intersect Group shares his thoughts on how Google focused on getting their sales process right and generating a steady stream of revenue through a high velocity sales team.
