Revenue Journal®

I'm writing this while sailing with my husband from South Africa to the States, bringing home a boat we had built in Cape Town. It's an 8,000-mile trip. We've been at sea since April 20, stopping only once at St. Helena, an isolated island in the middle of the South Atlantic. Obviously, I'm also still working.

I'm learning a lot of lessons on this journey. One important lesson is the importance of staying cool in a crisis. Given that this was Memorial Day week, and given what some of you are going through right now with your businesses, I started thinking about bravery, and the role it plays in our business life.

I don't think I've ever seen anyone put "bravery" and "your business" in the same sentence. It's just not spoken about. So much that is written about business has an impersonal, third-party tone to it, as if your character and behavior have nothing to do with success. In fact, if you start your own business and struggle to keep it alive, there is nothing "impersonal" about your success - or failure. It is "personal" in so many ways.

Your family is depending on you, for one thing, to keep them housed, fed, clothed, and educated. That burden rests squarely on your shoulders, and it is with you every second of every day. You also have a responsibility to your own destiny. There are also employees and vendors depending on you so they can meet their own familial and business obligations.

You have put your heart and soul into your business, and you have no intention of abandoning your business in the face of some very tough economic realities. Instead, you are racking your brain, thinking of all the actions you could take to preserve the essence of your business as you reluctantly sacrifice other aspects of it. All of this takes strength of character, and a cool head. You can't let the "worst case scenario" drive your emotions or your decisions. You don't want to waste any energy on those "worst case" thoughts.

Instead, you want to take action - the right action. And doing so will require bravery. In my mind, the phrases "where no man has gone before" and "beyond the call" do the best job of defining bravery in business.

Where no man has gone before

Your business is unique. You saw a certain kind of need, and figured out how to fill it. You had the required skills, character, and experience to build a business that met that need. No one is you; no other company is your company; no other product or service is your product or service.

By any standard, you are in uncharted territory.

When you started your business, you took a big leap of faith. Now that your business is established, you aren't looking to take big leaps of faith anymore. You're trying to hold on to what you've already built. You are, probably, risk-adverse.

The problem is, when cash gets tight, the usual methods of doing business go out the window. Customers change their buying methods, and you need to adjust. If you keep trying to do things the same old way, you won't survive.

You're right back in uncharted territory. You can't afford to be risk-adverse right now.

You also can't afford to make bad decisions, precisely because cash is tight. You're living closer to the edge than you'd like to.

Many CEOs and entrepreneurs turn to case studies at a time like this, hoping to find answers. But because every business is different, none of them will give you a trustworthy roadmap for the decisions facing you now (or at any time). The people, the history, and the circumstances are never the same. One could even say that case studies can be harmful, because they can make you think, "Ah, that's what I should be doing," when in fact that course of action could lead you to failure - and keep you from what you really should be doing.

The good news is, as you venture out into this new "uncharted territory," where you have to adjust to how your customers want to do business now, you have a guide available to you. When you first started your business, one of the reasons you were in uncharted territory is that you had no customers. Now you have customers, and they can serve as your guide as you make your way forward in this new environment. The phone works fine. Most customers are flattered when the CEO of a company gives them a call and asks for their point of view.

But you will have to be brave. You will have to make those calls. The same bravery you called upon to start your business has to come into play again. This is truly uncharted territory for most of you; you know you should talk to customers, and you talk to them sometimes, but you don't make a point of calling them and asking them how their business is going, what trends they see, and what you could do to make it easier for people to find and buy your products.

Beyond the call

Customers come to you with expectations. If you meet them, you are in the running with all the other companies in your field. If you exceed those expectations, you stand a very good chance of making the sale - and creating a loyal customer who looks for new opportunities to buy from you, and who refers others to you.

Very few businesses operate in a "beyond the call" mode. Why? Because it takes a brave CEO/entrepreneur to make sure his business operates in "beyond the call" mode.

It means you must set high standards and have a way of implementing, measuring, and improving them. It means that you can't tolerate anything less than the best from your people - and they should know that, every minute of every day. It means that you have to pull your head out of your spreadsheets and mingle with the customers, vendors, and employees, making sure that you know what is really happening in your business (you would be surprised at how sequestered most CEOs are, and how little of the real truth they actually hear from sycophants and self-serving ladder-climbers).

The average customer out there, both in the consumer and business-to-business arenas, has lost faith in organizations of all kinds. They have become skeptical and cynical, after all the promises made to them - and broken. The disparity between the paid-for public messages ("We're here for you!") and the customer's actual experience ("You have reached our company outside of normal business hours. Please call back between 8 to 5, Eastern Time." Click.) has created an environment in which any promise you make is suspect.

The only way you can overcome this skepticism is to over-deliver, from the first contact onwards. The customer's actual, positive experience is the only thing that will separate you from the pack and put you into a special category in the customer's mind.

How can you accomplish this? You need to look at all the interactions your customers have with your company, and decide where they are on the "beyond the call" scale. Do you answer all incoming web-based inquiries immediately - or at least within a couple of hours? Do your salespeople return calls within the hour? Do you know what they say, when they do? When they promise to send additional info, do they send it immediately?

Have you ever sat down with your staff and talked about "beyond the call"? Asked them what they could do, in their own jobs, to give that level of service? To deliver beyond the customer's expectations? That alone will get your business to a new level - all of you deciding what would make a difference, and then all of you setting up ways to actually make it happen.

Cool under fire

The traditional definition of bravery is that of being cool under fire. No question about it, your business - and you - are under fire now. This is the time when you must find new strength of character that you didn't even think you had.

More than ever before, customers are looking at company leaders and asking themselves, "Can these people be depended upon to do the right thing? Can I trust them?" Your dedication to "beyond the call" will be obvious - and encouraging - to them.

This is the time for you to show true leadership, by calmly and consciously (and bravely) turning to your customers for insights, and then making decisions that potential customers will find heartening and appealing.