Money Oriented vs. Customer Oriented

Hello my Dear Readers,

Last weekend my family had a guest over at our house. The guy is in real estate business and knows quite a lot about marketing and the art of selling. At first I thought “Oh, no another salesman full of himself” but luckily he proved me wrong! He mentioned a couple of very important and interesting points. The thing is that in today’s world a lot of us out there, we tend to forget that there is more to our jobs than just money. Obviously, if we work well and complete our duties on time we get a pay check at the end of the month and are very happy and satisfied with the entire process. However, in order for us to be able to be happy and satisfied there is something more to our jobs than we might think. For instance, the company’s policy comes plays a big part in this. Imagine working for Coca Cola – to be able to work for this company, you have to believe in the same values as the company.Furthermore, you have to comply with all the rules and internal policies of the company.

When I was taught Organizational Behaviour back in college most of the students, me included, thought that this course was a waste of time. However, at the moment I can tell most definitely that this course brought more value to me than I thought it would. Coming back to the salesman, this is exactly what he mentioned. He said that the most successful salesmen don’t think of the money they are making, although it is a big part of the job, they rather concentrate on meeting the needs of the customer and provide the client with the product/service that is exactly asked for. This ensures the fact that the client is happy, which results in likelihood of the same customer coming back and suggests the possibility of the client spreading the word about your company to their friends, thus increasing their own customer value. Therefore, this suggests that being more customer oriented is more important and will result in bringing more profits to the company in the long term than simply selling the most expensive service/product in the shop.

The problem today is that many of us use the following term “customer oriented” without fully realising what exactly do they mean with that. Some of us just put the term on their resumes simply to get the job. Think about it… what is being customer oriented to you? Do you believe that a certain set of values and an ideology can drive the company to make more profits in the long term?

Perhaps I am lacking the experience, still quite young here and only at the beginning of my professional journey, and perhaps it’s just my subjective point of view but I do believe that there is at least some truths in it.

xoxo – K