To make a profit, of course! Oh wait. Maybe it’s to provide the best product or service the world has ever seen. Hmm. How about, to build a place where collective missions can flourish?

According to business success strategist Philip Humbert, it’s none of those. Read on.

Strictly Business: The Purpose of Business

I hear lots of discussion about purpose and mission statements for business. Some tell me the purpose of any business is to make a profit. Others focus on the quality of the product or on teamwork and morale. Obviously, all of that is wonderful and to some extent necessary. But it misses the point.

The purpose of every business is to serve a satisfied customer. Period.

In the end, satisfied customers create the profits. Satisfied customers create repeat business, which is vastly more profitable than finding a new customer for every transaction. Satisfied customers allow for pride, satisfaction and the constant improvement of our goods and services. Only satisfied customers will ultimately keep the doors open and allow the business to “work.”

Sure, a great marketing plan is desirable. Of course, making a profit is necessary over time.

But in the end, only satisfied customers make everything else possible.

So, what are your customers really looking for? What benefit or convenience, what quality or experience is most vital to them? Ask them! Let your customers tell you what makes your business special. Let them tell you how and why you stand out from your competition. Let them tell you why they buy from you and keep coming back.

Too often, business leaders spend too much time examining details when a simple lunch or phone call to your best customers could tell you precisely how to grow the business. In the end, systems and business plans, tools and equipment are good, but only to the degree that your customers are smiling. Everything else is detail.

Copyright 2008, All rights reserved. Philip Humbert.

Contact him at www.philiphumbert.com or Coach@philiphumbert.com. Sign up for his free TIPS e-newsletter.

A Web site is a means for communication. An effective Web site does what you want it to do. For example, you may want your site to communicate a message to your target audience, sell your products, or teach, entertain or inspire.

An effective Web site follows design, content and usability principles that focus on the site’s visitors. You want to make information easy to find and easy to understand. You want to make it easy for visitors to take action, whether that action is to contact you, engage in a conversation, buy a product online, or simply to smile.

To remain an effective means of communication, most Web sites require proper care and feeding. And not just any old tinkering around. The key is to base the TLC primarily on what your site visitors need.

It doesn’t matter if you’re bored with the colors or other visual design elements. It doesn’t matter what Technology Tom says you gotta have. It doesn’t matter what Artsy-Fartsy Fara thinks would look fabulous. If it doesn’t enhance or support your communication with your target audience, forget it.

Gerry McGovern addresses this issue in his New Thinking article, Resist Redesign:

Redesign is classic organization-centric thinking. It rarely has much to do with making things better for the customer.

Your website isn’t working. What should you do? Well, how about finding out why it isn’t working and fix that. But let me tell you this, the problem with your website has rarely anything to do with its graphical design.

Your website is working. But it’s four years old. What should you do? Leave it alone. Or focus on making it work even better. But let me tell you this, making it work better has rarely anything to do with its graphical design.

Organizations love projects. You get a budget and a launch date. You can get busy and look like you’re working really hard. Some web teams love website redesign projects. It’s fun. They get to go to lots of meetings and talk about graphics and colors, and to extol about how bored they are with the old design.

But usually it’s not the web team that wants the redesign. Rather, it’s some marketing manager. Or some senior executive in communications who has had a golf course conversation about the Web. Or some newly appointed manager desperate to reinvent the wheel.

Great websites are not redesigned. They are continuously improved. The website that gets some new budget every couple of years for a redesign is the website that is being managed like a brochure. In other words, it’s not being managed.

Keep reading…

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