I recently read “Another Way” by Dave Whorton. In this book, Whorton gives practical advice and real-world examples of companies going Evergreen. Several of the tenets of business growth he describes resonated with me and my experience growing a company in the distribution business.
Key factors
Whorton reports: “The key factors that determine success were/are service, mission, teamwork, and fun.” During my career at a distributorship, I often couldn’t believe I was actually paid to do it. I really enjoyed the job. Of course, there were times of stress and frustration. It was not rewarding to lose a key account or feel we had been inattentive to a customer’s needs. We were able to overcome setbacks like these, however, because we focused on service, mission, and teamwork,
Paced growth
Our company followed what Whorton calls Paced Growth — the discipline to focus on long-term strategy, and balanced short- and long-term performance. In this way, we grew steadily and consistently from year to year. I estimate that our compounded growth rate over the years I was with this distributorship was at 8% per year. Like many of the Evergreen companies Whorton reviews in his book, we believed that if we took care of our customers and employees first, the profits would follow.
Four tenets
Here are four tenets that our company shared with Evergreen companies.
- Make sure customers have a good experience. When we added new accounts, we committed to becoming “partners for life.” We did this by introducing customers to our vendors, holding open houses and barbeques at their facilities, and other joint venture engagements.
- Bring in the best people and give them the right tools to become your future leaders. This means providing employees with the latest digital technologies. According to a report by Tecmony, “58% of companies in the B2B sector actively use chatbots.” The rising generation of employees is already using AI agents. According to a Google survey, 93% of Gen Z respondents said they were using two or more AI tools per week. If your C-Suite is not training your employees with digital technology, your employees will more than likely find a company that will.
- Provide continual growth. This keeps everyone interested and engaged in the company. The best companies share their profit with their employees. In our distributorship, we returned 10% of the net profit to employees. We also had a 15% ESOP. Continual growth will come naturally if your employees feel they are shared owners.
- Maintain a reasonable bottom line while staying private. Make sure your company has the cash to grow without relying on outside interests. Employees who see consistent improvements will work harder to grow the business.
Follow these tenets
Make sure your customers have a good experience, and your employees are the best and the brightest. Provide continual growth and maintain a reasonable bottom line while staying private. Following these four tenets brings growth and employee satisfaction. When employees can say, “I can’t believe they pay me to do this”, success follows!
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