Let’s get this straight. Customers do not buy products, they buy what products help them do. Thus, the goal for businesses is to determine what it is they help people do and then proceed to help them do it in the best way possible.

This means there is more to business than just selling a product, you have to think about how you sell, deliver, and support so that customers get their job done in that best way. Additionally, you must remain vigilant and keep abreast of anything that might improve what you are providing. In other words, you should always be ensuring you are providing the best way to help your customers do what it is they want to do.

With this frame of mind, everything a business does is viewed through a lens of service. Remember, service is nothing more than helping people, and when the entire objective of offering, selling, delivering, and supporting the use of a product is geared around helping customers to successfully achieve their goals, your business is aligned and rowing together as a service. In fact, your business becomes service.

Why does this matter you ask? Well, too many businesses do not think this way. Too many don’t seem to understand the game at all.

Imagine a sports team not playing to win but just going through the motions to entertain. They just play the games to get people in the stands to watch. If they win, good, if they don’t, as long as there are paying spectators, it’s still good. This seems to be the tack of many businesses. Self-interest over customer-interest. How long will fans attend games where winning (this is what fans want) is not as high a priority as paying spectators (what the team owners want)? I would submit that the fan base will diminish and it will diminish not solely because of the losing but also because the fans realize they are being used.

Businesses with more self-interested goals – ones whose focus is selling – get found out. Customers lose interest and leave feeling like pawns. On the other hand, businesses with more customer-interested goals – ones whose focus is on serving – find more lasting success as customers gain trust in the fact that they will not be exploited.

This makes it clear, if long-lasting success is a goal of a business, it should adjust its thinking to customer interest as its priority. It should make “what’s best for the customer” its overriding mantra. It should defer and offer the customer any option for success, even if it means suggesting another company who might have a more fitting solution.

This might be a tough pill to swallow but imagine the trust that gets built. Imagine the customer love. Imagine the future possibilities when a customer knows you will never cheat, lie, or steal just to get their signature on the bottom line.

Is your business functioning around self-interest or customer-interest? Is your business about product-selling or customer-serving? The answers will define you and just might make the difference in the long-term sustainability of your enterprise.

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