What Business Are You In?

Have you ever been inside an Apple store? It would be unfair to call them “computer stores,” because automatically you might conjure up an overstuffed, car dealership pressurized kind of environment, but that’s not what they’re like at all.

An Apple store is part sanctuary, part laboratory, all Mac. Unlike other electronic outlets, the shelves are not stuffed with product upon product, option upon option. In fact, there’s very little inventory out on the floor. Apple’s three core lines, desktops, laptops and iPods, sit casually on bare tables. Small note cards describe their features, clean white lights illuminate them and that’s it.

It’s bare, it’s modern, it’s almost sparse. And it’s exactly what Apple wants.

We learned this recently when Chick-fil-A spent time studying Apple. In addition to researching their brand, we interviewed them and in the process we learned something surprising. Apple doesn’t consider themselves a computer company. Sure, that’s what they excel at. That’s what they make. That’s what they sell. But when push comes to shove, Apple doesn’t think of themselves as a computer company. Instead, they see themselves as a relationship company.

They see what they do on most days as relationship building and relationship repairing. The stores reflect this thought. You don’t talk to a salesperson, you meet a “Genius,” a highly trained Apple employee who knows the product inside and out. You don’t wait in a line to buy your product, you complete your entire transaction right there with the Genius who is helping you. You don’t labor through transferring all your data from a PC to a Mac. They’ll do that for you.

At every level, the relationship is stressed above all us. Understanding this, the question for you and I then becomes, “What business are we in?”

Apple looked beyond the product and what was expected, and found something much more important. The result is a brand that people love. They pay more for it, travel longer distances for it and even put stickers celebrating it on their cars. I love PCs too, but I’ve never seen a Windows sticker on the back of a vehicle.

So what business are you in? As a leader, how can you answer this question in an unexpected way? How can you start today to ask your team members that same question?

Because just like Apple, the answer might surprise you.

[Photo Credit: : .:Philipp Klinger :.]

This post is categorized Live