Flip the Funnel: How to Use Existing Customers to Gain New Ones

IT’S ALL ABOUT CULTURE

The will to change isn’t an epiphany or revelation. Nor is it a scene from Jerry Maguire where a simple Manifesto (or memo) is going to transform a company overnight. If anything, it may get you fired.

Figure 16.3 I’m a Zappos V.I.P.!

Source: © Joseph Jaffe.

Do you know the difference between a chicken and a pig in a ham-and-egg breakfast? The chicken is involved but the pig is committed.

Like our poor friend Porky, Change is a commitment. It’s an irreversible and irrevocable all-hands course correction that can have a profound impact on an entire organization and even the market in which it operates. Change is also conspicuous, and in a world of sameness and mediocrity, it sticks out like a sore thumb. It’s also infectious and hard to ignore (or imitate) once a leader emerges from a pack of clones.

There’s a reason the first four letters of “culture” are C U L T. Take the Zappos Experience—happening almost hourly at their corporate offices in Henderson, Nevada—and you’ll see why. You’ll meet Doctor Vik and get a Polaroid in their VIP chair (Figure 16.3). As you walk past each department, they’ll all spontaneously and collectively whoop, chant, and play a musical instrument in an almost territorial and tribal way. It doesn’t take too much of a leap to see how this translates to world-class customer service.

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