If you REALLY want to be inspired, and to grow your leadership abilities, I wish I could introduce you to my new friend, Klaus Kibsgaard, CEO of BMW Nordic.
You’ll be reading more very soon here about my visit to his incredible meeting last week in Stockholm — however, I wanted to first share with you something I learned about Klaus as I was doing my research prior to his remarkable event.
Before his current job based in Sweden, Klaus was CEO of BMW Portugal. When he first arrived at that position, he made three critical changes that provides a terrific example for all of us.
#1: He moved the “after-sales service” manager into the office next to him — instead of the CFO.
Stop and consider for a bit what type of powerful message that action sends throughout the entire organization about the importance of taking care of the customer!
It’s one thing for the CEO to pay lip-service to the importance of the manner in which we treat our customers. It’s quite another to place the person with direct responsibility for that activity right next to us, to ensure everyone knows you mean what you say.
#2: He made certain there were great leasing deals for employees — so a lot more of them would be driving BMW’s.
Isn’t one of the reasons the Apple Store has been so successful is the people who work there are obviously fans of what they sell?
Which leads to the next point:
#3: He took key people to Munich for a tour of the BMW factory, to see the precise and innovative engineering, the remarkable process by which the “Ultimate Driving Machine” is manufactured, and meet with corporate leaders. However, he also showed them a great time and got his team more emotionally connected with each other — and with BMW.
In other words, he sold them on what they were selling.
The results? According to a case study by IMD and Professor of Strategy and Business Policy Jan Kubes, who is also Director of the MBA Program International Consulting Projects, “The company was in a difficult environment, had lots of competition, had lost about one-third market share, and was losing volume.”
After Klaus’ efforts, “For the first twelve months after this was implemented, sales of BMW went up 52 percent, compared to 14 for Audi and minus 11 for Mercedes Benz.”
Dr. Kubes makes a critical point in his report: “If you’re going to spend money on the brand, make sure that the rest of the system is supporting it.”
Klaus Kibsgaard realized the critical importance of congruency — it makes little sense to spend money building the brand, if the experience customers receive fails to reflect the promise.
A first step to ensure the delivery of an “Ultimate Customer Experience ®” is to be absolutely certain you have already sold your people on the product and service you are asking them to sell to your prospects and customers.
Are you sold on what you sell?
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