The strange force behind growth and profitability

A skillful executive conquers with knowledge and imagination…He out-flanks his competitors in the constituents mind without resorting to head-to-head battles and lengthy campaigns. Donald G. Krause.

According to Forbes report in 2016, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China ranks number one bank and company in the world with a market capitalization of $143 billion and also has the highest net profit margin. ICBC has maintained top positions only on Forbes 2000 for four consecutive years.

JP Morgan Chase, Apple, Exxon Mobil, Wells Fargo and Toyota are all among the top ten on the list of Forbes 2000 in 2016. It is important to note that there is no African company in the top 300. The Standard Bank of South Africa and Stenhoff International, a furniture and fixture company also of South Africa only showed up as number 317 and 440 respectively. The reasons for these are not far-fetched and I will highlight some of them here.

But, we need to first understand that success is never a product of chances, rather it is a result of making the right effort. Any business that commits time and resources in doing the right things rightly will have the intended results. Everybody on earth has equal and unlimited access to business success irrespective of geographical location, economic and political conditions.

In an interview with Zhang Hongli, an Executive Director and Senior Executive Vice President of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China on CCTV, he emphasized that the turning point of their success was asking themselves what the people of China truly wanted in terms of financial services. Their focus on what the people they are serving truly desired from them was the defining moment for them.

A customer is one for whom a product is customized, not someone who is convinced by a company to change his preferences and choose their offer. The world has changed in significant ways over the past few years and is still changing at such an incredible speed characterized by economic liberalization, increasing competition, high consumer choice, demanding customer, more emphasis on quality and value of purchase etc. To be relevant in the business world and remain that way, a business must be forward thinking and exceptionally innovative in providing the highest value to its customers.

All these changes have made today’s effective business leaders shift from traditional marketing to modern marketing. Modern marketing calls for more than developing a product, pricing it, promoting it and making it accessible to target customer. It demands building trust, a binding force and value added relationship with the customers. According to Ashoka Dutt head of Citi Bank “the idea of customer relationship management is to know the individual customer intimately, so that the company has a customized product ready for him even before he asks for it.

What makes a company successful in a global scale is not seeking ways to convince the consumers to buy from them, it is not manipulating the mind of people through psychology rather it is being customer centric.

It is the responsibility of a company to create the highest value for it’s customers and to also take full responsibility for its weaknesses or inability to meet the expectations of the customer. It is the responsibility of a company to understand the true desire of its customers beyond the narrow description of the culture prevailing in the environment. Africans deserve first class service. As companies in Europe, Asia and America strive toward creating more inclusive customer-centric businesses, African companies must do the same.

According to Donald Krause, the ideal strategy is to make a competitor’s product obsolete through innovation. It is important to understand that the actual definition of competition is the resistance of the various forces that engages a businesses in its drive to serve its customers. So beyond product and service innovation business leaders must also reinvent their organisations to become service oriented. Any organisation in which the people are unconsciously disposed to anticipating, recognizing and meeting the needs of their customers will dominate the world.

The reason is that customer-centricism is the secret of innovation and with innovation comes control and power. If a company controls an industry through innovation, how can any competitor stand it?

African business leaders must become independent in their thinking. They cannot depend on the business wisdom of the western world to drive business in Africa. The target should not be to become like the Bank of China, Apple or Microsoft but to be who you are. Let Zenith Bank be Zenith Bank, a successful, inclusive and sustainable Zenith Bank. Let Zinox be Zinox, a successful, inclusive and sustainable Zinox Computers.

African businesses has within them everything required to make it to Forbes Top 100. It’s a matter of internal power concentration.

This leads me to an interesting thought. It is the fact that Africa is really not a black race! The ideology that Africa is black is the major reason why African nations have been wobbling politically, socially and economically for many decades now. Black was a derogatory term used by their slave masters to describe them in the days of slavery and has nothing to do with skin colour. First of all, nobody has a black skin and nobody has a white skin. Black means darkness, ignorance and lack of light (information). It is interesting to understand that people from the Middle East are not called white irrespective of the fact that they are fair skinned. So from where came the term? From those that called themselves white of course.

If Africans are black then their black businesses mind must depend on the whites to be successful. So they will depend on following where the whites lead. Enough of that already. Do your thinking independently and see you on Forbes list 100 in 2017.

 

Brian Reuben

Brian Reuben helps companies and individuals operate, sale, market and communicate effectively. [email protected]  0808 726 4420