Sam Walton, the legendary founder of Wal-Mart, followed these rules for growth. And based on our experience from running both online and offline physical brick & mortar businesses, we confirm their value even today. So it’s worth taking the time to think about them for your own business. These are very useful lessons from Sam Walton that can create wealth if implemented with careful thought.
1. Commit with passion to your business. (this is often missing in many teams that seem to be not growing)
2. Share profits with your employees. (this was a rarity a few decades back, but today it is the expectation)
3. Motivate your partners. Money and ownership are not enough. Set high goals, encourage competition, and then keep score. (the feeling of challenge is very important, and your business partners should feel they are working towards something important and worthwhile – relationships can’t build on financial performance alone)
4. Communicate everything to your employees. The more they know, the more they will understand. Information is power and the gain you get from empowering your associates more than offsets any risk of informing your competitors. (all the IT systems including ERP and CRM systems are exactly about this point – given the a full picture, your talented staff can produce more business growth than you have planned. of course, there will be confidential information and IP which you need to share on need-to-know basis, but the essense is to share with all the right people, so that they are aligned)
5. Show appreciation for a job well done. (this is especially important in those cases where you don’t expect repeat business transactions to happen – and by taking this approach, you will see new business leads coming from unknown areas – it has happened to us often!)
6. Celebrate success and in those inevitable failures, find some humor. Don’t take it so seriously.
7. Listen to everyone in your company, especially the ones who actually talk to customers. They really know what is going on out there.
8. Exceed your customers’ expectations and they will always come back.
9. Control your expenses better than your competition. (cost control and cost cutting is among the most difficult things to do in a business, and really stresses the entire company, but it can be constructive if approached well and with sufficient communication about why jobs or perks are being cut, or why salary is not being raised this quarter or year. On of the interesting things we observe is that investment in systems and processes often leads to reduced labour costs in medium-term to long-term, so it is worth evaluating on regular basis for business cost control)
10. Swim upstream. If everyone else is going one way, there is a good chance you can find your business niche by going the opposite way.