Curt Fowler.

“Customers will never love a company until the employees love it first.” – Simon Sinek

There are four quadrants that great businesses are always striving to improve. They are Finance, Customers, People and Clarity.

Last week we talked about Quadrant Two — Customers. As a reminder, our businesses exist to meet the needs of our customers. The better we meet those needs the more our customers will buy and the less price sensitive they will be. Happier customers yield higher margins and more cash.

The only way to deliver amazing products and services to your customers is through your team — your people. You might be doing all the work yourself right now, but as you serve more customers with excellence, they’ll tell their friends about you. More customers will come to you and you will be forced to build a team that can deliver the same level of service that you would.

If we are already delivering excellent products and services to our clients, the cap on our growth is our ability to attract, retain and grow a great team. How do we do that?

Employees and employers often turn to pay as the primary way to keep and attract great people. Based on a lot of great studies on this topic, pay is not “the” factor. Pay is one of the factors. Throwing cash at a problem is the lazy choice.

Think about it in your personal life. What requires more ingenuity and creativity, finding a solution or buying one? We default to throwing cash at problems and cash is always a temporary fix. An unhappy team member will become temporarily happy with a pay raise. But that happiness is temporary!

If you’ve been in business very long, you have experienced this. If you want to dive deep into the topic Google “hedonistic adaptation.” It is fascinating how quickly we can become unhappy with something that we desired so desperately just a little while back.

If pay is not the answer, what is it? In his great book, “Drive,” Daniel Pink lays out three primary drivers of satisfaction at work and in life. They are mastery, purpose and autonomy. We all want to be great at what we do. That is mastery. After we put a roof over our heads and food on the table, we want to make a difference in the world. That is purpose. We all want the freedom to grow and to change our work environment to improve it for us and others. That is autonomy. How can you incorporate these three pillars into your workplace?

After we’ve incorporated Pink’s pillars into our culture, we must meet the individual needs of our people. We are all different and need different things to make us happy. Some of us love to learn, others desire work flexibility, some want an award, others would prefer cash.

Have you ever done the five love languages quiz with your spouse? It is an eye-opener! We can do all we can to love on our spouse, but if we are not loving them in “their language” our efforts will fail. You can check out the free quiz at www.5lovelanguages.com. They even have a work version, but I’ve found the free personal version works well at work to. Just be careful with the “physical touch” love language – high-fives and giving “knucks” are good substitutes.

Doing a quiz like the love languages quiz is a method of listening. Great relationships are built on listening and responding. My favorite tool for listening and responding to your team is the Employee Net Promoter Score (ENPS). Try this survey. Make it anonymous and you will be amazed at what you learn.

The ENPS also provides a score. Scores rock because they allow you to track your progress and benchmark against others. Here is how it works.

Ask your people two questions:

“On a scale of 1-10, how likely are you recommend our workplace to your friends and family?” Then ask them “Why?”

 “On a scale of 1-10, how likely are you recommend our product/service to your friends and family?” Then ask them “Why?”

Listen to your best people and respond. This is way more effective than paying people to stay in a bad workplace.

Turnover is bad for profit, culture and customers. Manage it and reduce it. Become the employer of choice in your industry. You don’t have to be the highest bidder in the marketplace to be the most sought-after employer. Paying your people fairly and treating them exceptionally works.

It is the right thing to do and it is the most profitable thing to do.

Business is a fun game and it is a lot more fun when all the players are watching the same scoreboard.

We love helping leaders build great businesses. If you’d like to learn more you can check out our great, free resources at www.valuesdrivenresults.com/resource-library/ or give us a call at 229.244.1559. We’d love to help you in any way we can.

Curt Fowler is President of Fowler & Company and Director at Fowler, Holley, Rambo & Stalvey. He is dedicated to helping leaders build great organizations and better lives for themselves and the people they lead. A syndicated business writer, keynote speaker and business advisor, Fowler has an MBA in Strategy and Entrepreneurship from the Kellogg School, is a CPA, and a pretty good guy as defined by his wife and four children.