Focus on Service, Embrace Change (Modified from Don Quinn’s Speech at The NATSO Show 2016)
Being a leader is more important today than it ever has been. We are living in a world where nearly everything has become commoditized. People can price check from our aisles. They see the price of the fuel well before they pull up to the pump. We’ve never had this multitude of opportunities to interact with our customers and our customers have never had more choices on where they choose to do business.
As a result of all of these options, we must find something that will make our locations stand out when compared to our competitors. One of those differentiators can be our service. We’ve always been a service-oriented industry, but today it is not enough to simply serve customers. Now we must exceed their expectations.
In order to exceed their expectations, the one element within our day-to-day operations that we cannot over value is our staff. Everyone at our locations has to be committed to also exceeding our customers’ expectations.
Before our employees can engage our customers, we have to engage our employees. We have to remember to treat our employees with the same level of customer service we ask them to give our customers.
Because our employees are on the front lines each day, they know our customers better than anyone else. Some of the best ideas within our businesses come from employees that come to work each day and do a job on our behalf.
Building strong relationships with our employees and showing them that we care about them and respect them gives them a reason to care for our customers, identify ways to better serve them and share their ideas with us.
Receiving a great idea from an employee—no matter how big or small—shows them you value their opinions and that their contributions are an important piece in the success of this company. I am certain that if you pulled any one of your employees aside and asked them, “What is the one thing I can do to help you better serve our customers or improve the staff’s experience?,” they would have a suggestion.
Ask your employees to think through every experience a customer goes through and share one way you can make it better. The more that we can craft an experience that matters to our customers, the more they will choose to do business with us.
During the Great Ideas! Workshop at The NATSO Show, we heard dozens of ideas from our fellow operators. That collaboration extended throughout the show and operators from all over the country were together in an environment where ideas can mingle and swap. We can extend that throughout the year.
Borrow other people’s hunches and combine them with your own. Not all great ideas are handed to you ready to use, so be flexible in how you think about using an idea. Look at how you can alter and adjust something someone else is doing and apply it to your business and your customers. There is no telling what you might come up with.
Sometimes our ideas are outside of the norm—actually, the best ideas tend to be outside of the norm. But we can’t be afraid to swim upstream. When we go against the current, we can find our niche.
But let me tell you, when you decide to go against current, people will waive you down and try to stop you.
When Walt Disney tried to distribute Mickey Mouse in 1927, people told him the idea would never work. Clearly, they were wrong. Sometimes all you can do is smile and nod while trudging forward.
As businesses and our operating environment grow and shift, change is necessary. We have to be open to that change as there is always opportunity that exists within it.
Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. If something doesn’t work, and not everything will, stop and try something else.
One of the benefits of NATSO membership is having a group of fellow operators who can provide insight to help us along our journey. The events NATSO hosts throughout the year are amazing outlets to help us step back from our business and look at our operations in a new light. If you haven’t taken part in or signed up for the domestic study tours, please consider it. These opportunities will take you behind the scenes of similar operations, and industry leaders share their expertise on site.
There are so many ways NATSO assists operators, but I am a firm believer that the more you give, the more you get. The more involved you get with our industry’s association, the more operators you will meet, the more vendors you will connect with and the more you will learn about the opportunities within the industry.
Developing that deeper understanding, increasing your knowledge and growing your network will pay great dividends both professionally and personally.
Photo Credit: Chuck Fazio
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