Jonar Nader says that there is something more important than the bottom line. He outlines the three business areas that determine whether or not we can charge more for our products and services.
There are two videos below. The second one is of a higher quality for those with high-speed internet connection. The first video is 11 Mb. The second is 21 Mb. Video length is 6 minutes and 26 seconds. Further below is a transcript of the video.
Here is the transcript:
Jonar Nader: To achieve this objective of charging the customer more and having the customer pay more with pleasure, we need to answer some questions and the first one – the first question is, ‘What is your most important asset?’ What’s one plus one? You didn’t have to think about that. What’s your most important asset? There’s going to be a bit of a debate about that. Does your owner agree with the finance, the accountant agree with marketing? Do the sales people know about this? Like one plus one is two. It’s absorbed. And then, once you’ve sorted that out which could take you months of work because this is not an easy question, I grant you, we go to the next difficult question.
Tricky. The first one was what’s your most important. And now, what’s your most valuable? What’s the difference? Well, I don’t know. But there is a difference. For example, you might say to me, ‘My car is a very important asset.’ But then if the house is on fire, you might grab the photo album. So the house might be an important asset for you but the photo album might be more valuable or you might be stranded somewhere and you have lots of petrol, lots of wood but only three matches. All of a sudden, three cents worth of matches become the most valuable thing. Up to you.
But there is a difference in business generally. First, tell me what is your most important asset. And second, tell me what is your most valuable asset. And if not all of you know this from the cleaner to the receptionist to the owner, I’m sorry, it’s not going to work.
The next question is, if we are to charge the customer more, then really, we are talking about consumers and we had better understand the secrets to modern consumer behavior. And then the question will follow, what are the seven rules or the seven maxims that modern organizations must follow? But first, let’s start with this question. This is a sacrilegious question. How dare anyone ask it because we have been brainwashed into thinking that the bottom line is the most important thing there is. But I’m suggesting to you that maybe there is something more important than the bottom line.
Well, they’ve worked that out at Harvard and elsewhere and again, if you’ve done your MBA …
What’s more important than the bottom line? Well, this is what we are told.
Jonar Nader: They say it’s a triple bottom line. Really, who has done their MBA? You all agree with that. Your triple bottom line. Now, there is merit in this because it says, look, don’t just fuss about your money. Money bottom line isn’t the only thing in the world. That’s very important. But if you’re an organization and you don’t look at the second element of the triple bottom line, the second element being your society, if you don’t contribute to society and help society, if you don’t add any value, to society, society won’t want you. And you see demonstrations in the street now calling for certain organizations to go home. So the triple bottom says quite truthfully and genuinely, of course you must look after your money but also look after where you are. And the third element is please do not pollute the environment. So therefore, it is your finances, society and the environment.
Now, why do we even care about the bottom line? Lazy people care about the bottom line because lazy people, when they’re thinking about the year’s activity in a business, this is what they see. A spaghetti mesh of indecipherable nonsense because none of us can capture a year in a sentence or a year in a number because if you count all the emails, all the phone calls, all the kilometers, all the pieces of paper, all the arguments and discussions and things you’ve done and places you’ve been and invoices you had paid and payroll and – it looks like that because business is quite messy like that.
But the lazy people can’t see the wood for the trees in this spaghetti mesh so they say, ‘Look, I don’t want to know.’ Did we make a profit or didn’t we? Have we increased or haven’t we? And so, the lazy people don’t want to know about that. They just want to know the end result. But that is dangerous because you see, the end result is really a fait accompli. It is a foregone conclusion what your annual end result is going to be. If you can retrace those wires and work out the input. So, the answer to my question, what’s more important than the bottom line? It is the triple top line because it is at the top where things feed. I put that picture up there of this stream because if you lived at the bottom of the stream and you are poisoned and the water is poisoned, what do you do? You can put a sign up that says, ‘Do not drink the local water’. You could get someone in with a fantastic filtration system. You can do all sorts of diversions. Hard work, isn’t it? Wouldn’t it be better to go upstream and find the goon who’s just putting rubbish in your stream and say, ‘Hey, mate. Stop that.’
You see, it’s the input that determines the fait accompli. So what are the inputs that determine your bottom line? Well, I’m here to talk to you about charging the customer more and having the customer pay more with pleasure so therefore, my inputs are three that I’m going to focus about even though there are many. But the three inputs are your staff, your quality and your customers. They’re the three balls that come into the funnel that determine that bottom line issue of being able to charge more.
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