Glove that Fits The Hand
I subscribe to the notion that “easy to work with” leads to prosperous business growth. I’m not talking about being a pushover but I’m referring to the notion that flexibility to your customers and speaking their language leads to the best outcomes for you and your business. It’s a goldilocks scenario of sorts, too easy to work with then you’re a pushover. You will lose and get distracted. Too difficult to work with as a company, you’ll lose as your world will shrink around you. Finding the right balance is just right and it takes being a chameleon in the industries you serve to make sure you’re the glove that fits the hand.
When you think ‘your way’ is the only way and you won’t budge in business dealings then you’re missing the bigger picture. In many areas of concern for your counter-party, you either adapt or someone else will. If you're inflexible and resistant to change, you'll quickly become irrelevant (it’s just a matter of when). The ability to adapt to changing circumstances is crucial and being flexible can help you navigate any situation - especially as markets move around you. You can only educate so much before a customer makes their ultimate decision.
As a startup, we’re trying to disrupt and change the way people engage in electric vehicle charging - a rather new category for our buyer. Because it’s a newer space, we’re often lumped into the same process as service vendors for our customers - requiring us to jump through legal contract reviews, vendor credentialing hoops, and other processes used to mitigate risk. While Xeal is more akin to a Peloton bike than we are to a landscape service firm, we’re still asked to play ball the same way. While we could push back all we want about a silly contract review or an over-analysis of our terms and conditions, our willingness to engage and work through these with our clients is one area we’re able to stand out. We’ve heard from our clients that they’ve ceased working with some of our competitors because they were too rigid around their terms - or unable to make changes to a templatized contract. Don’t take this as an invitation to negotiate with us - but rather an admonishment of choosing not to speak your customers’ “language.”
Because of this we got a call the other day from a client’s legal counsel who said “Whenever a client asks about EV charging we always recommend Xeal. Not only do you have differentiated technology but your team is just easy to work with to get things done.” That meant a lot to me and something that we should be proud to hear as a company. Because I often get a front row seat at the final strokes of these agreements, it reminds me of someone to whom I deeply respect from my commercial real estate days.
I’ll never forget when I moved to Los Angeles in the spring of 2018 and I got a chance to work alongside Jeff P, the #1 commercial real estate broker in LA. We got to know each other over that year and I would routinely pitch business with him and watch as he negotiated deals on the landlord side of the office leasing market. He always asked the question to the tenant rep after engendering trust in them - “let’s skip a step, where do you need us to be to make a deal happen?” That simple question cut out the guessing game of back and forth negotiation. More often than not, if the offer was in the tenable range to his client, they got a deal done. Could Jeff had squeezed more out of them? Sure, but at what cost? People liked doing deals with Jeff because they knew it would be straightforward and it would be painless. He once told me, “I’m the Costco of Real Estate,” I think what he meant to say is “you always get a good value deal when you deal with me, you’ll leave happy and you’ll always come back for more.” That’s always more important than the profit on one deal.
Now, every business is different but when I think of some of the greatest businesses out there, I look at the businesses where you walk out and think wow, I just got a great deal of value for what I paid. You can have high volumes and low prices or you can have low volumes and high prices but you tell me which is a better business, Walmart or Hermes? Costco or Whole Foods? Different audiences sure but when it comes to network effects, the winner is whoever reduces the upfront friction and enables more people to walk out the door happy.
All that said, a better product with a better process and a competitive price leads to a winning outcome. Let’s look at the car dealership model and how Tesla upended the market. In the 2010’s and into the 2020’s we all got used to making four figure purchases on the internet. No one would call you crazy to purchase a new laptop from Best Buy or Amazon online. No one would call you crazy to book a $6,000 vacation package online. No one bats an eye anymore at submitting their taxes online with TurboTax and never speaking to a real human. Then why would it be so crazy to customize your car and purchase it online for delivery without purchasing in store? The answer for the decades prior was “well, dealerships are a source of knowledge and expertise but you need a place to test drive the cars.” Then Tesla comes along and creates a seamless buying experience online coupled with an in-person test driving center and a knowledge hub at a price point below or akin to a luxury vehicle. Problem solved, experience enhanced, business thrived, growth targets achieved.
So I sit here today to think about what our greatest strengths are and what we need to do to win and it’s very clear to me that a better product, better service, better buying experience, at a no-brainer cost sold by someone that makes it easy to work with is the answer to success.