Make Your Customers a Promise Says Entrepreneur

New Zealand-born business speaker and global entrepreneur Carl Bates was recently in Cape Town addressing business owners at a Business Partners seminar on the difference between product and promise in business.

“My favourite example for Virgin [Group] was when Sir Richard Branson launched double beds on Virgin Atlantic …” Bates told the audience. “And a journalist said to Sir Richard Branson: ‘This is a brilliant idea. How did you come up with this idea?’ And Sir Richard Branson said: ‘I didn’t come up with the mile-high club … I just decided to give consumers what they wanted.’”

Bates’ Virgin Atlantic example shows how Branson, founder of Virgin Group, focused his business strategy on delivering a promise to meet the needs of consumers, rather than on products.

He added that the role of an entrepreneur should be to undertake a promise to consumers and the role of the enterprise should be to hold that promise. “The most successful businesses on the planet understand the context of promise.”

Bates is the author of The Laws of Extreme Business Success.

Original article by Kate Douglas, How We Made It In Africa, December 19, 2013.