• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Advertise
  • Submissions
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Mar 3, 2021
  • Startup
    • Creating a Plan
    • Funding a Startup
    • Franchise Center
    • Getting Your Office Ready
    • Making Your Business Official
    • Marketing Your New Business
    • Personal Readiness
  • Run & Grow
    • Customer Service
    • Human Resources
    • Innovation
    • Legal
    • Operations
    • Risk Management
  • Leadership
    • Best Practices
    • Communication
    • Green Initiatives
    • Open Culture
    • Strategic Planning
    • People Skills
  • Sales & Marketing
    • Advertising and Lead Generation
    • Marketing Innovations
    • Marketing Plans
    • Online Marketing
    • Relationships
    • Sales Activities
  • Finance
    • Budgeting and Personal Finance
    • Payments and Collections
    • Tax and Accounting
    • Pricing Strategy
    • Working with Investors
    • Working with Lenders
  • Tech
    • eCommerce
    • Hardware
    • Software
    • Security
    • Tech Reviews
    • Telecom
  • Shop

SmallBizClub

Helping You Succeed

efile4biz banner
Home / Leadership / Strategic Planning / Businesses with a Higher Purpose Also Increase Profit
Businesses with a Higher Purpose Also Increase Profit

Businesses with a Higher Purpose Also Increase Profit

384 Views

Mar 16, 2018 By Marty Zwilling

Many entrepreneurs still don’t understand that building a business culture today of doing good, like helping people (society) and planet (sustainability), is also a key to maximizing profit. Employees and customers alike are looking for meaning, not simply employment and commodity prices. Every company needs this focus to attract the best minds and loyalty in both categories.

In the classic book by Christoph Lueneburger, “A Culture Of Purpose,” he details how to build this new culture, and why it is becoming more instrumental in bringing about success, as well as sustainability, in organizations as diverse as Unilever and Walmart. He outlines a three-phase process to develop the necessary business culture of energy, resilience, and openness:

  • Nurture your current leadership strengths. Learn how to recognize, cultivate, and leverage the competencies of your current talent to develop your leadership team. Highlight leaders with business acumen as well as purpose as role models. Change leadership is a critical competency in the early stages of a transformation.
  • Hire the right team. Ask the right questions to identify the innate personality traits in potential new hires, regardless of level and function, to bring on board those most likely to succeed in and shape your organization. Employees with a purpose actually are easier to recruit and retain. They also tend to stay longer with the organization, reducing costs.
  • Craft your culture into an actionable plan. Create an environment that unleashes these competencies and trains and pushes them to the fore. Shape how people relate to one another and collectively go for what would be out of reach to them individually. Success is people moving from a reactive to a proactive focus on doing good.

In all cases, the transformation starts with placing leaders with a purpose at the core, hiring talent with a purpose at the frontier, and then building and extending the culture of purpose both inside and outside the organization. I can think of at least five ways that this benefits the business, as well as customers:

  1. Products in a purpose culture more readily sell at a premium price. Evidence is growing that consumers are willing to pay at least a small premium for sustainability, and have started to demand a discount for “un-sustainability.” Companies can use this strategy to improve their profitability and competitive advantage.
  2. Doing good opens the door to a broader customer base. By adding to perceived value, a company attracts more sophisticated and demanding customers less expensively and more quickly. More and more customers choose a company based on their perceptions about the good that they do, as well as their price and service.
  3. Customer loyalty and trust go up for companies with a purpose culture. According to marketing surveys, 76 percent of global consumers believe it is acceptable for brands to support good causes and make money at the same time. We all know the cost of retaining customers is far less than the cost of new customers.
  4. Companies with a purpose culture have more productive teams. Doing business is a human process. Team members interact on a daily basis with the stakeholders of the company and the way they feel about the organization has a major and direct impact on how they perform their tasks and do their job at the end of the day.
  5. Investors like startups that foster planet and social responsibility. Investors believe these startups demonstrate more integrity and less risk, as well as being better positioned to deliver long-term, sustainable value to their stakeholders. Of course, investors still require a profitable business model, and the potential for high returns.

Thus doing good leads to doing very well, not less well. Lueneburger contends, and I agree, that the most effective and remembered leaders of our time, and the most successful companies, will be builders of cultures of purpose, which inspire the hearts and minds of people both inside and outside the organization. Is your personal leadership shining well or less well in this direction?

Filed Under: Strategic Planning Tagged With: Profit, Purpose

Source: Startup Professionals

Marty Zwilling

Marty Zwilling

Marty Zwilling is the Founder and CEO of Startup Professionals, a company that provides products and services to startup founders and small business owners. Marty has been published on Forbes, Harvard Business Review, Huffington Post, Gust, and Young Entrepreneur. He writes a daily blog for entrepreneurs, and dispenses advice on the subject of startups to a large online audience of over 225,000 Twitter followers. He is an Advisory Board Member for multiple startups; ATIF Angels Selection Committee; and Entrepreneur in Residence at ASU and Thunderbird School of Global Management. Follow Marty on Twitter @StartupPro or Circle him on Google+.

Related Posts

  • Putting Your Company’s Purpose First to Help Create Positive Impact
  • Take a Stand
  • Is Discovering Your Passionate Purpose an Accident?

Primary Sidebar

Random

Don’t Neglect Injury Insurance for Entrepreneurs, Especially if You’re Solo

Mar 3, 2021 By Marinus Nutma

Here’s Why You Need a Business AND a Personal Website

Mar 3, 2021 By Devon Bartlett

3 Ways to Move Your Business Online Right Now

Mar 3, 2021 By Gemma Moss

5 ways to increase sales with product videos

Mar 3, 2021 By George Mathew

The Value of a Dollar and the New Wage Gap

Mar 3, 2021 By Brian Wallace

Footer

About Us

Small Biz Club is the premier destination for small business owners and entrepreneurs. To succeed in business, you have to constantly learn about new things, evaluate what you’re doing, and look for ways to improve—that’s what we’re here to help you do.

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Copyright © 2021 by Tarkenton Institute, Inc. All Rights Reserved | Terms | Privacy