Delivering Happiness

Posted by Ann Barr in Marketing Tips | no responses

Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on this topic.

What if once a year your company holds a Bald and Blue Day? If you want to show company spirit you can either shave your hair or dye it blue?

And imagine if one of the people shaving his head is your boss?

Welcome to the rather wacky world of Zappos.com. It’s an online shoe and merchandise company where “business as usual” is anything but.

Tony Hsieh, the visionary CEO of Zappos explains in his book “Delivering Happiness,” how an emphasis on corporate culture can lead to unprecedented success.

“Make customer service the entire company, not just a department. Focus on company culture as the #1 priority. Apply research from the science of happiness to running a business. Help employees grow both personally and professionally. Seek to change the world. Oh, and make money too.”

Sound crazy? It’s all standard operating procedure at Zappos.com, the online retailer that’s doing over $1 billion in gross merchandise sales every year.

In 1999, Tony Hsieh (pronounced Shay) sold LinkExchange, the company he co-founded, to Microsoft for $265 million. He then joined Zappos as an adviser and investor, and eventually became CEO.

In 2009, Zappos was listed as one of Fortune magazine’s top 25 companies to work for, and was acquired by Amazon later that year in a deal valued at over $1.2 billion on the day of closing.

In his first book, Tony shares the different business lessons he learned in life, from a lemonade stand and pizza business through LinkExchange, Zappos, and more. Ultimately, he shows how using happiness as a framework can produce profits, passion, and purpose both in business and in life.

Zappos today is known for having great customer service, but that wasn’t always the case. When they were nearly bankrupt and had no money for marketing, they decided to reach out to their existing customers in the hopes they would become repeat customers. It worked.

Taking a $39 loss on a free pair of shoes might appear to be bad business on the surface. But when that person told 5 of their friends, it ended up being more cost effective than $39 worth of advertising.

This is a powerful idea that your customer service can actually be your best marketing tool. At one point Zappos was relying on manufacturers to drop ship all the products they sold on their site. This allowed them to carry zero inventory and run a simple business, but the orders only had about 95% accuracy and were slow to ship. It also limited the selection of what products they could sell.

They had to make a tough decision: if customer service is what they were all about then they needed to control the entire customer experience from beginning to end. They made a major shift (and nearly went bankrupt) in the process of starting to keep their own inventory, but it paid off.

It’s worth spending some time thinking about what your core competency is and focusing only on that. Once you decide what it is, you may have to sacrifice in other areas to achieve it – so you can’t make everything your focus. Check out Delivering Happiness at Amazon.com

Company Spirit

From http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/06/06/sunday/main6553702.shtml

At a time when many retailers are struggling, Zappos (derived from the Spanish word for shoes, zapatos) is thriving, thanks in part to a unique company culture – and its 36-year-old CEO, Tony Hsieh.

“Our whole belief is that everyone’s a little weird somehow,” said Hsieh, “and so it’s really more just a fun way of saying that we really want people’s true personalities to shine in the workplace.”

Tony Hsieh so believes he’s learned how to create both passion and profits that he’s outlined his philosophy in the book “Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose” (Business Plus).

“So the book is another way to help spread the message that it’s actually possible to make employees happy, make customers happy, and still make investors happy … and you know, still have profits,” Hsieh said.

He’s not kidding. Zappos is now so successful that last fall Amazon paid $1.2 billion to acquire it.

About The Author

Ann Barr is a telesales marketing success coach with a passion for teaching. She loves helping people who are starting out in new telesales careers and working with experienced sales reps who are looking for new ideas and tips. In addition to presenting monthly e-classes, she writes and edits direct-mail marketing letters and emails for clients. Sign up today for Ann’s free Weekly Sales Tips and get marketing tips and ideas to increase your sales!