Are you like that? Just because you are the President of your company, or the manager of your function, does that autoatically empower you with wisdom that no one else possesses? Hardly.

Every time I thought I had it down right, something comes along to humble me. Fortunately, those somethings have come along often enough to remind me that I don’t have all the answers. In fact, I don’t have most of them-and neither do you.

But your people and the marketplace do. Always look there for guidance and answers. Never be so arrogant that just because you are in charge makes you smarter than the planet. You’re not.

The other day I asked my executive assistant to send something out for me. Somewhat timidly, she told me she thought it was a really bad idea. I listened, and concluded she was right-it was a bad idea. She told me that I probably didn’t want her opinion (I hadn’t asked for it, but should have). I told her I always want her opinion and that as the CEO I had the power to make stupid decisions-but I rely on my team to keep me from making them. You should too.

An example we can all relate to is in a hotel. The problem with most hotels is no one “owns” the customer after the check-in. The front desk owns the customer while he is checking in, but afterwards no one seems to be responsible to be sure the guest is having an “I will use this hotel again and recommend it to my friends” experience.

Case in point: I was at a hotel recently when I had a leaking pipe in my room. So I called the front desk because I believe it owns the customer. The front desk told me they would notify maintenance-and they probably did. But an hour later the pipe was still leaking and still no maintenance. So I called the front desk again. They told me they had called maintenance before and would call them again. The front desk saw this as a maintenance problem. It was not. It was a customer experience problem, and in a hotel, the front desk should own it. All the front desk did that day was shift the problem to maintenance. And then they figured they had done their job and they were done. They weren’t.

The front desk should have asked maintenance for an estimate when they would arrive at my room to fix the problem. Then the front desk should have called me and gave me that estimate. And when the estimated time arrived, the front desk should have called me to see if maintenance had arrived. That is owning the customer. None of that happened. I had to call the front desk to tell them maintenance didn’t show up.

How often do your customers have to tell you when something is wrong with your product or service? I would bet every time. Do you think I was irritated because I had to call the front desk to tell them maintenance didn’t show up? You bet. Do you think your customers are irritated when they have to tell you your product didn’t work? You bet.

Who “owns” the customer experience in your company after the sale? Does anyone? Most companies think they are done after the sale unless they get a complaint. And they may be pretty good at fixing the problem (delivery, quality, wrong size, or whatever), but by then it is too late. The seeds of discontent have been sown.

The point is this: You should build in checkpoints along the post-sale process to proactively determine if the customer experience was excellent or not-and intervene to solve any problems before the customer complains. Don’t make them call you because by then the seeds of discontent have been sown- first because something isn’t right-and second because they had to take the time to call and tell you about it.

After the sale notify the customer when to expect delivery (Amazon does a great job at this) and a method for tracking the shipment. After the shipment date, ask the customer if they were satisfied with the purchase (this can be automated). And of course if it wasn’t, make it right promptly and then ask them again if you have fixed the problem to their satisfaction.

I know what you are saying. “My sales person owns the customer” The problem with that approach is most sales people are more interested in making the next sale than the care and feeding of the last one.. You’re probably better off letting your sales people sell and building in an automatic process to track the post-sale activity.

Always remember this: Beware the seeds of discontent. It’s a great way to lose customers.

Your business can be just like that. If you are not watching it closely, small problems set in. Maybe lead times slip a  little bit every year. Perhaps the margins erode just a little bit every year. Operating expenses creep up, product development slows down, and customer service starts slipping-just a little bit every year.

And then, seemingly overnight your business has lost customers, market share, and profits and is in serious trouble. Your business is in a crisis and you don’t know what to do.

Here is what to do-don’t let it get there to begin with. Get on the scale of your business and check it’s health every single day. Watch it like a hawk and when it slips, correct it immediately. Don’t be like Best Buy, a company that is going out of business slowly (read this link from Forbes.com  http://ow.ly/8BZVO).

When it was time to board the plane, it was delayed because the flight crew was late because of the rain. Now mind you, everyone was on time for the flight that night-everyone except the flight crew. Gee, shucks ladies and gentlemen, we are sorry we are late, but the rain and traffic, you know.

Now the flight crew flies out of Rio all the time. So they know what everybody else knows about Friday nights in Rio in the rain. Big time traffic jam. So they know it will take twice as long to get to the airport and if they don’t leave early, the flight will be delayed. They know this, but they still didn’t leave early. And this is not a one- time event. Whenever it is raining in Rio on a Friday night all the flight crews know the flight will be delayed if they don’t leave their hotel early. But they never do. Why? Because it doesn’t matter to them if the flight is delayed- they don’t have connections to make. And it would be inconvenient for them to have to leave their hotel early. You see, they don’t run their crew scheduling for your convenience. They run it for theirs. They do what they feel like- these are flight crews running amok.

The airlines spend hundreds of millions on new aircraft. And they let their flight crews decide whether to be on time for the flight or not. They spend millions on in-seat entertainment systems. And they let their flight crews inconvenience hundreds of passengers. They spend thousands on duvets and fine wines. And yet they let their flight crews run amok.

Imagine giving all your employees a pass on getting to work on time because it was raining. “Gee boss, we’re sorry. We know we should leave for work earlier when it’s raining but we don’t”. Or how about this one. “Gee Mr. Customer, we were late on your delivery because it was raining here. In fact we will always be late on your delivery whenever it’s raining here. Why? Because our employees are running amok”.

The airlines manage their operations for their convenience, not for the convenience of their customers. They run their flight schedules, food, beverage, and baggage service all for their own convenience-without a thought about what their customers would prefer. The airlines can get away with this nonsense because they are government subsidized monopolies. You can’t, but you could be guilty of the same thing.

Are you? Let’s find out. Do you produce your product according to when the customer wants you to, or at your convenience? Do you ship your product at a time and cost that is most convenient for you or when your customer would prefer it? If your customer has a question or issue at 2 in the morning do you answer it promptly, or is that too inconvenient for you? Have you designed your entire company to be efficient and effective according to what is best for you-or your customer?

Take a fresh look at this from your customer’s eyes. How would they prefer to do business with you? And don’t let your company run amok.

But most of the things you might do are expensive, and risky. You know the stuff I mean-big bets on technology, expensive marketing and sales campaigns, etc. That is not what you want and what will get you there. You need what I call The Ten Million Dollar Solution™. The Ten Million Dollar Solution™ is simple in concept but very difficult in practice. It takes kahonies. It takes the courage to tell your  human resource people to back off. Because they won’t like it. They won’t like it because it rocks the boat and has the potential for legal risk. But so does getting out of bed in the morning. If the human resource people  had their way, they would have you lie in bed with the blinds closed praying to God that no one would sue you today. Well, no one will if you do nothing all the time (well, maybe no one will).

But that is not how you leapfrog your competitors. That is not how you stand out in the crowd. That is not how you create super value. The steps to triple profits and create super value start with your balance sheet. I don’t mean your financial balance sheet. I mean your employee balance sheet. This is the foundation for everything else The Ten Million Dollar Solution™ offers you. If you don’t get the foundation right, you can’t build the house.

I worked for a guy once who told me “as a general manager, you only manage two things-people and assets”.  That is so true, but the problem is, most managers are very comfortable in managing punch presses, but not people. That is why your company probably has a bunch of toxic employees-because your supervisors don’t have the guts to do something about them.

If you want to triple profits, you have to lose the laggards and losers on the balance sheet and shore it up with heroes and jewels. Jewels like the maid I met not long ago at a Marriot Courtyard. As I was leaving the room she asked me if I was checking out. No surprise here, she needs to know if she can clean the room for the next guest. But here was the surprise-that is not why she was asking me. When I told her yes, she said something that startled me. She said “Well, Mr. Blue, we certainly enjoyed having you stay with us. I am sorry to see you leave and hope you’ll come back and see us again soon. Thank you for staying with us”. She told me she really enjoyed having me stay there, thanked me and said she hoped to see me again soon. Now that is the power of a jewel employee! What is an employee like that worth? I say Ten Million. What do you say?

And can you believe this? In an undifferentiated market (like the hotel industry where all the hotels along the row are exactly like one another), a “jewel” employee can differentiate your company. The next time I am in town, I will stay at this Courtyard, all because of the way the maid treated me upon check-out. Imagine that-just a few kind words from the maid were worth more to me than the millions the Courtyard spent on marble and mahogany.

You have to bookend the customer experience so the first and the last contact is with one of your jewels. But, like I said, if you clean up your balance sheet, you won’t have anything but jewels!!

In the coming months, we’ll explore the Ten Million Dollar Solution™.  I’ll bring you ideas and concepts that I have used to triple profits. But let’s explore this together. Tell me your thoughts and ideas on things you have done that have worked. Let’s make 2012 the year you triple your profits

Inc magazine wrote an excellent piece on how to get in front of a social media nightmare that you should take a look at- http://goo.gl/mbGgb.

But here’s a better idea-how about not having any toxic employees to begin with? When I wrote my latest book “The Ten Million Dollar Employee: When Your Most Toxic Liability Meets Your Most Important Customer”, I said that your company cannot afford to have even one toxic employee. Some people disagreed with me. To those people I say, watch the Fedex video.

In today’s instant-wreck-your-company social media world, a toxic employee can do unbelievable damage in a very short time. But the chances are the impact your toxic employees have on your business is more insidious. You’re losing customers more slowly than Fedex will because of the youtube video. You are losing customers one customer at a time.

How many customers does one of your toxic employees touch in a day? How many in a month? How many in a year? Multiply that times the number of toxic employees you have and well-you get the idea.

And the worst part is, you won’t even know this is happening. All you will know is sales are down a little bit (maybe just a little bit), and no one can explain why. Next thing you know, sales soften a bit more and no one can explain why. This is the effect of toxic employees on your business.

The title of the youtube video is “Fedex Delivery Goes Terribly Wrong”. The title should be “This Is What Happens When You Don’t Fire Your Toxic Employees” Don’t wait around for something catastrophic to happen. Don’t wait around for sales to inexplicably soften. Clean up your employee balance sheet now and remove the toxic liabilities!

Here is a news flash for supervisors like that. 90% of your job is coaching and guiding your employees. That’s right, 90%. You can only manage 2 things-physical assets and employees. Any dink can manage a punch press. It takes a real leader to manage people.