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Jonar Nader: You can see on the other bedside table bedroom hotel that you stayed in, every hotel in the world that’s a four or five star has this. What’s it called? Customer survey form. Have you ever – isn’t that amazing? Why are they asking me to tell them if the shower works and the TV works? Why are they asking me? Why don’t they check the room before I get in and they fill in the form and they say to me, ‘Mr. Nader, we checked everything and it works and here’s your survey form.’

They want me to be their engineer upon check out. And I suggest to you that if you don’t understand your market, your customers sufficiently that you have to survey them to even know what they’re talking about, you cannot succeed. You have to know intimately. I heard the here, here. You’re right. I used to work in these corporations and I say to them, our computers are white back then. Everything was white. And I said to them, ‘They get grabby and they get dirty and can we have some colors and whatever?’ Oh no. Customers. I said, ‘What do you mean customers? Name free. You’ve never met a customer in your life. You’re sitting here.’ Customers don’t want black computers. Black is a negative color. You know what now? I’ve been fighting for this for years. I’ve been in the IT industry over 20 years. I’ve been fighting for this for years. This here, a machine is the best most advanced most everything. You could buy a house for the price of this. It doesn’t have a handle. And I am always dreading dropping it somehow. How much is a handle?

Shirts. I don’t know. You think this is prop that I put there on purpose but I actually have a sticker here on my label and you know what this sticker is? It’s actually for my Qantas bag ID number because my label itches. We can get a man to the moon and I have to stick this over the label because it itches.

Who’s joking? Customer survey form. I’m sorry. If you don’t know what’s going on in your hotel, in your organization, in your firms, but the trouble is you don’t call yourself, you see. You never actually call your own number. You never park where the customer has to park. You never see the fax at the other end. We send a perfectly good fax but our fax machine is dirty. We don’t know that it gets to the other end, you can’t read it. We never actually con – consumed.

This is my favorite survey story. These two hotels are actually real five-star hotels. And they are within – if you had a tennis ball at one, you can actually, from the foyer throw it across the road to the other. They’re the same brand. And they are fantastic five-star hotels but after September 11, one of them implemented a full security system where you can’t go to any level without a swipe card, which we see now a lot. And one of them started doing fantastic service, as in business. Revenue went up. Which hotel started to get the revenue up? The one that did not have the swipe card service. And everyone thought everyone wanted security. But they didn’t understand their market and no survey form would tell them, ‘Dear Sir, please allow Madam Fifi’s massage parlor to come to level 36.’ Because these executives did not want their lips to be disabled because Madam Fifi needed to visit them.

And they didn’t want her downstairs loitering.

Now truly, I found this up by putting a camera in the foyer because they said to me, they said, ‘We can’t understand why people are …’ And no one would tell you which survey form can admit to that?

Here is the transcript:

Jonar Nader: I was on the receiving end with Shared Services so perhaps I can share some of those stories with you. I once worked for a company called Compaq and the Compaq Computer is now known as HP. And the founder, Mr. Rod Canion had a phrase that he started from day-one and the phrase was, ‘can do’. And in those days, Compaq was what Google is today and what eBay is today. It was the blooming company that was breaking every record. It was the shining start. And so, at the rate we were going, we couldn’t survive unless we adopted Rod’s ‘can do’ attitude.

Then I moved to another company called Acer and Acer was another multibillion dollar organization and Stan Shih founded Acer from nothing. And Stan took ‘can do’ one step further. And Stan used to not accept no. So, for example, he was such a visionary but he was always frustrated by the slowness even though the IT industry was the fastest moving industry there was, but he knew it wasn’t fast enough. And so, one day I remember in a meeting and this was in Singapore and he was telling us that there will come a day when every PC will have a CD-ROM drive in it. Stan was Taiwanese and he spoke like this he said, ‘The PC of the future will have the CD-ROM drive.’ And everyone said, ‘What is this thing?’ and he was explaining that the CD-ROM could have so many megabytes. And we thought, ‘Why do you need a CD-ROM drive on a PC?’ I mean, it’s bad enough that it’s got every gadget on it but nonetheless, he was visionary. We didn’t even have games at the time and Stan appointed me the General Manager of Acer Software. I said, ‘What’s that?’ He said, ‘Well, it’s just – we have to create software to put on the CD-ROM.’ I said, ‘What would I know about software?’ He said, ‘Jonar, what would anyone know? This is a developing industry. There is no one out there who knows more than you and you know nothing so you’re as good as everybody else anyway.’

Jonar Nader: So, I all of a sudden became software manager, as well as all my other responsibilities. So, we have to create software. Now, here’s the point. This is the point. Shared Services. Stan had factories and he went to – and in the room, he spoke to the factory people and he said, ‘How long would it take before I can have a CD-ROM drive?’ And the factory manager said, ‘About 18 months.’ And Stan said, ‘No. Not good enough.’ And the factory manager said, ‘But you know, we’ve got a source it from Hitachi. We got to talk to Sony. We got to talk Phillips. We got to get the Microsoft Windows thing to work with it. Twelve months at best.’ So he said to him, ‘I have more than one factory, don’t I?’ ‘Oh, yes. How long for you?’ He said, ‘Oh, maybe 12 months.’ He said, ‘I’ll tell you what. Whoever develops a CD-ROM drive first, stays in business, and the other factory will shut down.’

Jonar Nader: Within three months, he had a CD-ROM drive.

Jonar Nader: And that was the attitude. And then I went to work for another large corporation. I can’t mention their name because I might get into trouble because I’m about to tell you a sad story.

Jonar Nader: Our chief in the US who earns millions of dollars in package happened to be coming to Sydney, so we had to have a management meeting, obviously. All the managers and it’s appropriate that we greet him, and present him with the country’s report. How we’re doing, issues, et cetera. So, they appointed me as the lackey who’s going to go put the report together. And I only had a few days in which to do it and one thing that I needed to bind the report in those days were these things which are the plastic, you know, how much are they? $0.3 each? $0.20? We had a Shared Services Department. And so, I needed these for the boss. And I went to the counter. It’s like a tuck shop and they opened it up at a certain time. And I said, ‘I need 50 of these for the management meeting.’ And they said, ‘You can only have ten at a time.’

Jonar Nader: You laugh.

Jonar Nader: What do you think was going through my mind? I said to them, ‘Mr. X is coming.’ And they said, ‘Who’s he?’ They didn’t even know who he was. So, I called OfficeWorks and ordered them on my corporate diner’s card which was as good as stealing a truck load of computers because I had broken the rules.

Jonar Nader: And I had broken the rules many times and they tried to put me in my place many times. For example, I had a conference in Perth. And in Perth, there’s a hotel called the Rendezvous Hotel and I had 700 customers coming for this presentation. And we flew from Sydney to Perth with all this equipment but the rules were I wasn’t allowed to stay in that hotel because Rendezvous wasn’t an approved hotel. I had to stay 30 kilometers away, at the approved hotel while I lug equipment, 600 brochures, 700 satchels and equipment and technology that needed a large truck. And so, I said to them, ‘Book me there anyway.’ She said, ‘No, you can’t.’ So anyway, I called under, you know, a total guise that I’m on holiday and can I please have a room and I booked a room. Well, for being another horrible thief, they thought that put me in my place, you know how they put me in my place? They audited me.

Jonar Nader: And when you are audited, it’s like saying someone is dealing in drugs in our company.

Jonar Nader: … it is the biggest shame of all shames. ‘Jonar, three and a half years ago, you ordered a battery for a pager. Can you show us the receipt, please?’ You know what a tax audit looks like? Well, this is worse. And I just thought, ‘Oh, goodness. That’s not what shared service is all about. Surely it ought to be the sum of us all, equates to better. But one thing I didn’t tell you is I literally could see boxes and boxes and boxes …

Jonar Nader: … behind the tuck shop wall. So, I’d like to therefore bring you into my world and talk to you about How to Lose Friends and Infuriate Customers.

Jonar Nader: Let’s see how we can infuriate our customers. Now, I prefer the term sharing services and I’d like to suggest to you that that – it is a good idea. Sharing services is a good idea if it means that we are sharing our resources and skills to serve the clients better and that’s the operative word. Better than they could get elsewhere. Then, I would agree with you that sharing services is a sound idea if we can make it invisible. Much like the light bulb is invisible. People walk into a room and it illuminates the room but no one looks up to the ceiling and say, ‘My goodness! What a fantastic Phillips light bulbs you have.’

Jonar Nader: It’s invisible. It does the job. No one needs to talk about it. And I think good shared services in some way ought to be invisible so that it is not an obstruction. It is a force behind. And I think sharing services is a robust idea if we can retain the service ethic. We do not want to become a monopoly whereby. So, in the consumer division, speed was a vital factor. And if we had too much stock, that we needed to sell, in the past, I would be able to call my ad agency and say, ‘Look, today is Wednesday, by Saturday in the Sydney Morning Herald and in the Melbourne Age, I need a full-page spread with the Harvey Norman logo, our logo and this is the promo and this is the special package.’ Wednesday, I could have that in the national newspapers by Saturday. But under the Shared Services Program, we lost the service ethic and I would call this worldwide agency and I’ll say to them, ‘Today is Wednesday, I need an ad by Saturday.’ And they’d say – they’d laugh like, ‘Sorry, can’t do. We can’t help you.’ And I couldn’t go elsewhere to get it done. Stan Shih from Acer, the founder of Acer I was telling you about before, he used to say to me, ‘Jonar, if at anytime any of my factories say no to you, you are authorize to go elsewhere.’

Now, I’m not here to talk about your policy. But we have to live under the guise that if we do not provide a quality service, people will either go elsewhere or itch to go elsewhere or wish they could go elsewhere and that is certainly not what we need, the feeling. Remember, we want it to be invisible, not so much that they need to complain about it. Now, I felt the service ethic had gone when one of the largest agencies in the world said to me, ‘We can’t put an ad on Saturday.’ That’s a disgrace. They’re not there to tell me what I can’t do. They’re there to empower me to do more than what I could have done on my own. So, watch out for that.

Let’s develop a Shared Services environment where as if we were in a very competitive environment and always say, ‘If they had a choice to go to a competitor, would they?’ We don’t ever want them to think about that. Some would say that they are not in the business to make a profit. Well, you need to act as if you were because that’s the source of the problem. People somehow think they’re not being competitive. You do need to have a mindset that we’re in the business to make a profit. Now, that profit might not necessarily be dollars. It might be in joy. It might be in efficiency. It might be in capability. But profit is important for growth.

Jonar Nader: And so, what are you profiting at the end of the day? Your profit measure might be skill and expertise and market dominance, contacts and networks. So, you have to, at the end of the day, come out with a net profit that says, ‘And now we can inject that back into our organization. That’s what makes our organization grow.’

Here is the transcript:

Female Speaker: The social observer, philosopher, author and lecturer, Jonar Nader has spent years studying people and their habits and he knows some tricks to surviving in the corporate jungle and he joins us now.

Jonar Nader: So I used to get up from a meeting and say, ‘Excuse me. I have an appointment with life. I am going, not putting up with this nonsense.’

Female Speaker: What? Are you nuts?

Jonar Nader: I almost got caught.

Jonar Nader: Because in the future, I can tell you, money will be linked to performance.

And what next? What will be the next big thing?

The idea about being a futurist is not that you’re this clairvoyant. My friend’s father was a clairvoyant and his mother was a contortionist and as a result, he could foresee his own end.

Jonar Nader: My father said to my mother, ‘You know, we have been married 36 years. And not once have we agreed on anything.’ She said, ‘Thirty-seven.’

Female Speaker: His new book Z is a fictional novel about the worst act of terrorism the world could ever see.

Jonar Nader: Even if I were the president of the world for 10 years, I still could not think of a way to generate peace. I finally did.

Half of the world is in conflict. Half of the world is at war. And I see it as a war on our destiny rather than a war on terror.

You must be forbidden from working anywhere, touching anything if you don’t know what it feels like, what it tastes like. You know, what’s on the menu? Chicken. What does it taste like? I don’t know. I just work here. Well, find me someone who doesn’t work here so I can find out.

Jonar Nader: In the future, companies who put us on hold will have to pay for our time.

And I think there should be two types of managers, the manager that says, ‘Any problem you have, come to me. I’ll fix it,’ or the manager who says, ‘Look, any problem you see, go fix it and I’ll back you up.’

Terminal.

Jonar Nader: They say the bottom line is the most important thing in companies. And I say no, no, no. Then they say, oh, hang on. You know, the triple bottom line is the most important thing. Oh, yes? What’s that? I say, the triple bottom line is you have to take care of profits, you have to take care of the environment and you have to take care of society. That’s called the triple bottom line. It’s being taught all over the MBAs at the moment. I say, that’s still useless. Talk to me about the triple top line. It’s your staff, your quality and your customers.

Teamwork is a lot of nonsense because it doesn’t work. What I want are teams that work.

See, I don’t think you can share energy or you can share power because the most you do, you’ll dissipate it. So, in essence, the function of power for me is to generate momentum. There is this notion of the perceived power. For example, people think that the queen is powerful or that a minister is powerful. What people do not realize is that in fact, it is the department that runs the minister, not the minister that runs the department.

Do you know how we say power corrupts? You know this notion. I don’t believe that power corrupts either. I think certainly corruption is powerful and that’s why people seem to steer away from power but in itself, it is better to have power than not.

Male Speaker: Jonar, you get the last word.

Female Speaker: Stick around, would you?

Jonar Nader: Yes, sure.

Female Speaker: Thank you.

Female Speaker: Jonar Nader is a digital age philosopher. For the past 22 years, he has maintained a dual career as an expert in both technology and management and presents to both kinds of audiences.

Jonar Nader: Are you actually delivering on your promise?

Female Speaker: For example, he was the opening speaker for the IT Summit and the CEO Summit. Sometimes, Jonar wears two hats at the same conference as he did for the Institute of Company Directors where he gave two keynotes, one about leadership and another about technology and the future.

Jonar Nader: So, is it good to always have a bit of dirt in the bottom drawer? On someone.

Male Speaker: How does it come down for you, Jonar Nader?

Jonar Nader: Well, I’m glad you’ve asked me this question now that I’m a consultant…

Jonar Nader: Because I’m making a lot more money now.

Jonar Nader: Whenever I see a bad employee, my first impression is, ‘Who is his boss?’ And so, I would like to know why that happened and spend my energy there because …

Male Speaker: Well, you were his boss…

Female Speaker: Whether he’s humorous or controversial, Jonar delivers tantalizing messages.

Male Speaker: The irrepressible Mr Jonar Nader.

Female Speaker: He’s known for his captivating after dinner speeches like the one he presented at the Australian Business Awards.

Jonar Nader: So, what’s going to be the most important thing for your business is your brand. And when I say brand, I don’t mean just only your logo or your brand awareness of brand image or brand building or brand recall or brand values. As important as they are, the single biggest important thing about brand is the brand bet. That means what the customer is prepared to bet on.

The issue is I know that we all know how to make a cake and we all have flour and we all have sugar and we all have eggs and we all have an oven and we probably have the ingredients sitting right now at home. But how many of us can actually make it? The process of knowing is not good enough.

Female Speaker: Around the world, tens of thousands of people have attended Jonar’s presentations. He’s popular with professionals in finance, law, science, technology, manufacturing and sales.

Jonar Nader: I don’t want to hear any more terms and conditions and conditions apply…

Most people don’t learn a new word after the age of 18. Their vocabulary stays the same thereafter. Most people don’t have a new dream beyond, you know, whatever they’ve been – now, that’s it, mate. You’re going to be a plumber the rest of your life.

I say to kids, don’t worry about what you are going to be when you grow up. How you’re going to live as you are living.

Female Speaker: Jonar Nader is the author of the best-selling book How to Lose Friends and Infuriate People. He has also written a book of modern wisdom called How to Lost Friends and Infuriate Thinkers.

Jonar Nader: If you stand up and rise and say, ‘Look boss, you know, I really don’t think this is the way we should be doing it,’ then others will get – gain energy from you because it usually just takes the minority to create something big.

Female Speaker: What’s your view on anger and what it does to us, our bodies and its purpose?

Jonar Nader: If anger happens, you stop and say, ‘This is great. The alarm bells have gone off. Now is the time to assess why.’ Not go down the pub and, you know, laugh it off but to say, ‘What triggered this? Because this is not the trigger that I will allow into my life.’

Customer service isn’t just about being nice to people. It’s about product knowledge, knowing your industry inside out, knowing everything about everything you can possibly know. If you don’t get out of the way because selling is as much a profession as nuclear physics.

Are you actually delivering on your promise? And if we do that, the rest will take care of itself.

Any executive who has a ticker tape of their stock price or to be sacked on the spot. Your job is not to check the stock price. It’s a check about Mrs. Smith the last time she paid you good money to buy her husband a nice something rather that just doesn’t work and when she calls to complain, you say, ‘Oh, wow. Well, 20 minutes on hold. Your call is important to us. And please bring it down. It might take two weeks to repair it. Theft!

Today on Wall Street, people are just running around for bottom line figures. And what are they doing? They’re really only cheating themselves because Wall Street is a joke and the sooner it blows up, the better.

So many corporations are failing today because there is a them and us attitude. We might think we’re making profits but they’re all manipulated. The real profit comes when people are actually satisfied, happy.

For me, success is not what you amass. It’s what you …

And if you hate your boss, do not treat your boss badly. If you don’t like what you are doing, all the more reason to do it better so that you can climb out.

You know, and who gets promoted in corporate life today? The backstabbers who know how to do it well enough.

Male Speaker:

Jonar Nader: You know, the creative people. Where do they end up?

If I put this on my head, people will go, ‘What’s this guy on television got this on his head for?’ Because the visible things, everyone is an expert at. They can see that’s wrong. But can they see that someone is a back stabber, a manipulator, a hound, a con artist? Can they? I don’t think executives and people in an office environment can see it.

Female Speaker: Jonar is also the author of the best-selling illustrated Dictionary of Computing and the technology writer for Butterworth’s Legal Dictionary and the Student’s Legal Dictionary. He also serves as an expert witness to the legal profession.

Jonar Nader: Unfortunately, the internet will have to collapse before it rebuilds itself.

Male Speaker: It will be exciting, real funny up here.

Male Speaker: That’s a must for everybody.

Male Speaker: Jonar C. Nader.

Male Speaker: Jonar: Stiff!

Female Speaker: Jonar’s last assignment as a corporate executive was at IBM where he led the consumer division in 18 countries. He’s the co-founder of both the Information Technology Society and The Leadership Foundation funded by McKinsey and Company and Qantas. Programs have been held at the Royal Military College and at the University of New South Wales. As a guest lecturer at tertiary institutions, he conducts his courses on technology, leadership, management, advertising, marketing and politics.

Jonar is a coach to high profile executives. He gives thousands of radio and TV interviews worldwide. His articles are published in some of the most respected business and IT publications. As a magazine editor and writer, he has worked for motor racing, art and fashion magazines and has held exclusive interviews with the likes of Stuart Devlin, jeweler to Her Majesty the Queen.

Jonar has interviewed the biggest names in art and design including Count Faber Castell and fashion gurus such as Jean Muir, designer to the late Princess Diana. He has interviewed many fashion giants including Count Zegna, Lagerfeld, Missoni, Kenzo and the late Gianni Versace.

Female Speaker: As the chairman of Logictivity, Jonar Nader guides CEOs and boards to engineer a successful future. To learn more, please visit Logictivity.com and find out how the world’s only post-tentative, virtual surrealist can rearrange your molecules.

Here is the transcript:

[Music]

Jonar Nader: Do you think the people who run hotels actually ever sleep in them?

[Music]

Jonar Nader: For example, this is the average sort of room I stay in. Have a look at this clock on the left here. I often wonder – you know, when I see things, I often wonder who buys them, who agrees, who raises the purchase order. Did they go to Hong Kong to the Expo Fair to buy? Who bought this clock? That’s what I want to know. Because I stayed in this hotel and I grabbed my mobile phone and recorded this sound especially for you. This is a direct recording by placing my mobile phone on this clock.

[Music]

[Clock ticking]

Jonar Nader: I couldn’t sleep. And I thought, they have purchased 700 of these. Did they ever think of what it would be like – did they go all the way to Hong Kong to buy these? They should have said, ‘I’ll take one with me and I’ll put it near my bed and if I like it, I’ll place an order.’ But no! They placed an order because it was cheap (and if you buy 300 extra, you get another…) they’re focused on the wrong thing. Do they care? You want to talk about customers, talk to me about it from the customer’s perspective. And here’s the beauty of all – what do you need a hotel room for? To sleep and shower. That’s it, right? That’s it. Not the mahogany and the tiles. Shower, the only thing. And apparently, don’t you love this…

[Music]

Jonar Nader: In most hotels that I’ve stayed in, in most, and I stay in all the best of hotels, it is like having three kids with a water pistol saying, ready, set, we’ll give you a shower.

[Laughter]

Jonar Nader: And the cleanest part of my body is always up here on my head. That’s it. You got a bit of dirt down here on your leg, forget it. Have you noticed that? Oh, but there’s a water crisis on. This shower was in Darwin, at a fabulous hotel in Darwin. Now, those people from NT, Darwin, they tell me it rains for 50 percent of the year. Do you not have water? I studied this. Do you not have water for 10 years? If it never rains again – it rains for six months of the year but if it never rains again, Darwin is okay for 10 years. So I called and I said, ‘Excuse me. I just can’t believe this. There’s something wrong.’ She said – before I could even finish my sentence about the shower, she said, ‘I’ll send up an engineer.’

What are you going to do? I know how to turn a tap. I’m telling you it doesn’t work. ‘All right. I’ll send up the engineer.’ What does that mean? That’s not customer service. That means shut up, I’m too busy. Go away. I don’t want to talk to you. I’ll delegate to the engineer.

In comes this engineer. He would have been near 90 with his belt, with all the tools and before I could even explain, he knew what I was going to say. He said to me, ‘I tell them to turn on the pump but they did not turn on the pump.’

[Laughter]

Jonar Nader: I’m in room 503. There’s no pump, no water, no pressure and she’s making out like I don’t know how to use a tap. I said to him, ‘Who are these people who don’t put on the pump?’ And he said, ‘Oh, you know, a committee.’ It turns out to be Housekeeping, Beverage Manager, General Manager, Duty Manager, Engineering and goodness knows, six people. And he started complaining to me.

[Laughter]

Jonar Nader: I said leave it with me. So I called the front desk …

[Laughter]

Jonar Nader: I asked, ‘Who is on this committee?’ Because, you know, Darwin is 43 degrees (109 F) in the shade on a cool day. And my conference was like almost now, you know, starting in the afternoon. In the morning, I was out enjoying the sun and for some reason there, the beaches have the finest sands I’ve ever felt and it gets into every nook and cranny. I mean, all that stickiness and all that, you know – and you’ve been at the beach. Everything is crinkly. You’ve got sand deep down and you’ve got to get it out to be in a suit to present to people. And she said to me, ‘Well, you know, it’s a decision that we have made.’ I said, ‘Have any of these six people who have made this decision to turn off the pump ever been to the beach in 43-degree heat, turned around on the sand and come to room 503 and had a shower? Because until you do that, you are not authorised to sit on this committee.’

You want to talk about customers? Roll in the sand the way they do and don’t you dare make decisions that you have no idea how it impacts them. What a joke! And then you read the brochure of this hotel, the finest, most luxurious, you know. The prince of the world can stay there …

[Music]

Here is the transcript:

Host: Jonar, part of your key message as a consultant is you spoke about strategies to get customers to pay more and be happy to do that. How do you think that can relate to our real estate industry?

Jonar Nader: You know, in the training programs that people hold for real estate agents, there’s the question of, ‘What do I do if my customer asks me, can you please give me a discount on the commission you’re going to charge for the sale?’ And in that training program, they say, this is what you tell the customer. Sorry, if I give you a discount on the commission for the sale, it proves to you that I buckle under pressure and if I’m likely to give away a commission to you, then I’m likely to give away value from your house.

Now, that is the standard training but I don’t think that that’s the best thing you can say. The best thing you can say is to demonstrate to someone where the value is so that it’s not a question of, ‘Will you take two percent or three percent or two and a half percent?’ It’s not the question. The question is not how much I pay you. It’s how much value you’re going to give me. And if you can demonstrate value, people will stretch. That’s called elasticity.

So for example, take running shoes and we all know some very famous brand of running shoes. You see a kid with them. He hardly works at $7 an hour yet he’s wearing $300 worth of rubber. And you say to the kid, ‘You’re a bit silly, young man. $300, there’s one down the road for $30.’ He says, ‘No, I don’t want it.’ In fact, you can buy two for $30 down at the – no, I don’t want it. Why is that? Because the kid is happy to pay more. We can stretch his elasticity to $300.

I recall recently there was this huge case about the underwear with this company that makes underwear in Australia and they had to – I think, sack 1800 people or so because I had to go to China for manufacturing and the CEO of this underwear company said, ‘Look. I’m sorry you have to go to China for manufacturing but the Aussies won’t pay 50 cents extra per piece of underwear.’ I thought, well, that’s a bit strange because Calvin Klein has been charging $30 more per piece of underwear. So, there is elasticity. People will pay 50 cents more and $30 more and ask a lady with a Prada handbag, $4000 more than is reasonable.

So now you’re saying to me that my most precious asset which is usually my home, you are so fixated on the price and you’re not concerned about the value, the speed, how long is your house on the market not selling. So here we are haggling over a few percentage points. Yet if your house is 60, 90 days on the market not selling, what damage is that to you versus the half of the percent you might get from me?

And so, I want people to want to pay more with pleasure not because I’m going to make them feel good but because I’m going to show them that I do charge more and we should boldly say at Harcourts, ‘We do charge more.’ How else do you think we can afford you, the level of attention that you deserve, the level of the speed that you require? We have back-up people. We have databases. We have internets. We have experts. We have the academy. These things have to be paid for.

So, taking money from a customer isn’t a sense of, you know, you’re ripping me off. It’s a sense of please, take all it takes so long as there is value and I bring that down to W-O-W. Wow. W-O-W is wow. And that stands for worth or wealth. So, to charge the customer more and have the customer pay more with pleasure, easy if there is worth or wealth. So don’t argue about the percentage. Let me show you the worth or wealth. And, in the process, I’ll treat you like my brother and I’ll tell you the secrets of the industry and I’ll tell you what to watch out for because there are a lot of people out there trying to trap you. And I’m not here to trap you.

So, once someone trusts you and says, ‘Wow, I’m glad you told me this. I didn’t realize this.’ There are so many things people don’t realize. Because it’s not our field, is it? I don’t know anything about real estate or plumbing or this or that, the customer would say. So they’re trusting you but there’s suspicion because they think you are just in it to make a buck. It’s a career. It’s a profession. It requires a huge amount of skill and training. But if we don’t show them that, then they’ll only see a guy in a suit. How do they know how many years of training is behind this suit? And so, we need to make that evident not just by saying it. See, saying doesn’t mean anything. I can say, please like me. Do you like me now? I’m going to tell you a joke and it will be funny. Is that for me to say or for you to decide?

We’re often are so concerned about stating things. I love stealing from the walls of companies, their mission and vision statements and I mix them up and at workshops, I say, ‘Here, here’s a mission or vision statement. Whose is this?’ They think – alright. Is this a hamburger joint or a law firm? They can’t work it out. They’re all the same. And so, we should just stop saying things. We will look after you. We are small. We are big. We care. Words. If you have to utter it in words, it doesn’t exist.

Here’s the rule in life. Anything I want you to think about me can’t come from my lips. If I want you to think I’m a cool, hip guy, I can’t walk up to you and say, ‘Hey, Gregg, we haven’t met before but I got to tell you this. I’m a cool, hip guy.’ I mean, it just doesn’t work. If I want you to think I’m honest, I can’t say it. So therefore, a lot of real estate agents out there are just telling you things because it sounds good. Well, we don’t want to tell anybody anything. We want them to feel it, to know it, to recognize it, to see it. And therefore, once they’ve determined through the proof that we give them and proof is not words. It’s through the education, through showing them our graphs, showing them the last 20 sales I’ve made in the area, showing them the last 20 open houses I have made, showing them my database. Then they go, ‘This guy is not talk. He’s evident.’

And that’s where I think we can evaporate from the question of percentages more or less. People will say, ‘Yes, of course, I paid more. I would be happy to pay more again.’ And that’s what my clients often say to me. They say, ‘At first, we thought you were expensive but now we actually think we’re getting good bargain.’ I go, ‘Great. Well, next time, I’ll charge you more.’

Here is the transcript:

Jonar Nader: Your staff, your quality, your customers. Now, let’s talk about customers. They’re a pain in the neck, I know. And I don’t love customers, I assure you. If I could be rich without customers, I’m happy. And why do people care about customers? For the wrong reason. If I ask you why are customer is important, everyone is going to say, ‘Oh, because they pay our bill and all the rest of it.’ That’s miserable. I don’t want you to love me because I pay your bills. I don’t want to marry you because I’m the one who’s going to pay the mortgage. I don’t want you to treat customers well because they pay you – that is a bad unhealthy user-relationship, isn’t it? I don’t want that. I want my staff to treat my customers well not because of my customer.

I have thousands of DVDs and CDs and not one of them is copied. I’m stupid. I’ve got friends who got 4000 and never paid for one of them. They download everything off the net. No artist ever knows. It doesn’t matter. I just simply don’t do it. That’s just me. I’m silly. That’s my rule. And therefore, in my business, I’m silly. My rule is, I don’t care about the customer. I care that every staff member follows the ethos of mine which is do your very jolly best at every time you can. And improve because customer service is not about pleasing the customer. It’s about the perpetual personal improvement. And if you are not a perpetual improver, you can’t get to where I’m about to take you in this presentation.

So don’t worry about customers. Worry about do we have a culture that authorizes someone to say, ‘That’s a very nice lectern; is there anything we can do to improve it?’ Now, people will take that as criticism or is never satisfied. I could put diamonds up there and Jonar is never satisfied. Well, it’s not that, you see. You’re being unreasonable. I’m just saying, ‘Can we improve it?’ And we should always have that sense of authority within us from the lowliest of the juniors. Let’s go by the way to the lowliest of the juniors. Where do you find them?

Jonar Nader: Generally in an organization, let’s say for argument’s say, the forklift driver is the junior. Now, here’s a test. The question is this. Now I know we’re talking about customers. I’m digressing a moment. The question is this, to whom is that forklift driver responsible? Warehouse supervisor or maybe warehouse manager.

Jonar Nader: Would you agree? Give or take? They’re responsible to the warehouse manager. Now the warehouse manager is downstairs. They’re usually responsible to somebody upstairs.

Jonar Nader: The warehouse manager is responsible to the warehouse director or the logistics director or such like. I’m following a path which will get us to where I was. To whom are directors responsible? The warehouse director, the marketing director, the finance director, the sales director generally report and are responsible to whom?

Jon Nader: The CEO, the managing director. Would you agree? Now, this quiz is getting harder because now you have to think extra hard. To whom does a CEO or the managing director generally – to whom are they responsible? Speak up. So let’s get one or two.

Jonar Nader: The board and you say shareholders. Well see, I’m taking you from the bottom up. You have to go step by step and you say the board.

Jonar Nader: I would agree with that. The CEO is responsible to the board, correct? Yes, the deep dark board. Now, it’s getting harder. To whom – this board around this table, this table, to whom is the board responsible? I hear shareholders. Do I hear anything here?

Jonar Nader: You can’t call a friend.

Jonar Nader: For 10 points. Well, yes, everyone would say the shareholder but you would know by now in the few minutes I’ve been up here, I’m a contrarian. I cannot agree with everybody else in the world because everybody else in the world agrees that it is the shareholder but I pray to – and beg to differ because you see, the shareholder and the board are one entity. The shareholder brings the money. The board brings the strategy that implements the skill and the expertise. The shareholder brings the capital and the board and the management bring the time or the intellectual capability. You are one and not one or to be subservient to the other.

And here begins the problem because the board is solely focused on serving this almighty master called the shareholder and the shareholder and the board are in cahoots. Because what do they do? They come together bringing brain power, time and management with capital, money, and access. And they come together to do what? To make a promise to an innocent third party called the customer.

I don’t give a hoot about the customer. I give a hoot about the ethos and the ethos says we collectively have come together and made a promise to an innocent third party. And what do we do about it? Do we deliver on our promise to that innocent third party? And if we do, this is where we are authorized to charge more. Look at how it works. You find your self a toaster and you say to the person selling you the toaster, ‘What on earth are you charging me $100 for?’ And I’ll say, ‘Well, there’s packaging. That’s $3.50. It’s all color and it’s plastic and then there’s the cord and the wire, that’s 92 cents. And then there’s the electrical componentry and the integrated circuit and the metal and–’ Yes, keep going. Well, then there’s my time as the manager of the toaster company and my car and my staff and the air-conditioning and the forklift. Yes, that comes to $87.50. You’re charging me $100. What’s this for? Well, let me think. There’s the advertising and the fact that we have to have a conference and play golf. So that comes to $90.

So I’ve asked you to itemize the toaster that you are charging me $100 for and the best you can do is come up with $90. What’s happening then? There’s 10 bucks. You’ve made a mistake. There’s 10 bucks. Yes. Well, why do you want to charge me that 10 bucks? I say, ‘Never you mind. Just give it to me. That’s my share. That’s my profit.’ Right? That’s profit. It’s Mafia country. I just – you owe me 10 – so every time a customer pays for that toaster, they’re paying $10 of free money. That works every time. Money is 100 percent robust. But I take the toaster home, it doesn’t work. Who ought to be hanged for that? He has got my perfect money. I have the imperfect toaster. So the board and the shareholders ought to be totally focused on making sure that when I give them perfect money, they give me a perfect toaster. And if it doesn’t work for some strange, physical reason, then I don’t want to spend 20 hours on the phone and send it back and will take three weeks to repair it and stuff you make basically. And we’ve got your 10 bucks.

And what we need to do is to get the board and the shareholders together to find a way to actually rip off the customer even more because your job is not to settle for 10 bucks. It’s to make it 20 and 30 and there ought to be no shame in saying, ‘You bet I make a lot of money on this toaster.’ Now, it’s up to you to decide. Take it or leave it. I should have busted my guts making you a toaster that’s cheaper and all the rest of it. I want peace of mind. I have my own ethics. That’s what I’m delivering and you bet it will sell. But can we – can they buy it with pleasure? That’s the next step.

Here is the transcript:

Host: Talk to us about losing friends and infuriating competitors. Can we believe him when he says that cost-cutting is for wimps?

Host: Let’s find out. Would you please welcome Jonar Nader.

Jonar Nader: Thank you, Sue. Hello, everyone. Try and complete this sentence. In life, those who are content are the richest of all. Would you have said that? In life, those who are content are the richest of all. Now, complete this sentence. In business, those who are content are sitting ducks. I would like to speak with you today about infuriating your competitors and if I ask everyone in your organization who is your number one competitor, would there be consensus? Would you agree? And then if I asked what are you doing about it, would they all know?

Do you think you can infuriate your competitors? What would be the biggest slap in the face you can think of? You know, people used to say, ‘Oh, we worry about a competitor coming in and slashing prices.’ I mean, that would be a bit of a slap in the face, wouldn’t it if your competitor just slashed prices and all the rest of it? But wouldn’t the trump, the ace be that if you could infuriate your competitors by not slashing prices but by charging more for your products and to top it off, your customers actually are delighted to pay more. But there are conferences going on all around the world. And I’m going to take you to one of them. And I bet you, it’s a 99 percent replica of everything that’s going on right now in any other conference.

But you can just start off by saying this. Welcome to the conference. And all the staff members will take out a piece of paper and they’ll start writing because the boss is about to deliver the annual objectives. And what are the annual objectives? What are the priorities? And the first priority, guess what it is. Always at any conference from any CEO about any next year priority. Listen up. Yes, listen up and increase the revenue. Why do they do this? Because they know that in business, if you’re content, you’re a sitting duck. But I don’t think they do this correctly because we don’t just want to increase revenue. That’s where you fail. What we want is to grow.

Now people know that growth is important. If you have a tomato on a vine and apple on a tree, anything in the world must grow but corporations have lost the touch of growth and they stretch and expand. And so they don’t say, people, let’s go grow together. They say increase the number. By hook or by crook, you have to do it. And what happens when we do increase the number instead of growing? When we stretch and expand instead of growing, what happens? They want more next year, that’s right.

But in any study you do, in any general – if you’ve attended Harvard, if you’ve attended all the MBA programs, you would have done case study after case study that shows conclusively that any corporation that has a fantastic increase in revenue suffers from what? A dipping profit. Now the CEO knows this so the CEO will say, ‘The second priority ladies and gentlemen is very important that we increase profit.’ Now, they just put that up as words, you know. They’re just words because we know that by that first objective, profit is going to dip. But it can’t because I’ve told you you’re not allowed to dip it. So there you go. That’s your objective. Go back home and make sure you increase profit.

So now you think to yourself, how on earth am I going to do that? So, the CEOs thought it one step ahead of you and we’ll tell you how to do that because there’s only one of two ways to do it. The other way is too hard so the easy way is let’s cut costs. Would you agree? That’s the third priority of any CEO anywhere around the world. Cut costs. And I’m suggesting to you that any fool can cut costs. Any wimp can cut costs. Will you not pay thousands of dollars for managing directors, marketing directors, sales directors, finance directors to get them in a room to pour out their grey matter and at the end of the day, they say, ‘Well, I think we can improve if we cancel the conference, cancel the ad budget, sack 60 people, close that office.’ Well, any idiot can do that. Why do we pay all these highly-skilled, allegedly qualified people to tell us to close things, cut things?

I mean, by all means, we need cost prudence. By all means, we should take care of not haemorrhaging and not wasting. By all means, we don’t want to leave the tap running, but cost prudence ought to be a natural part of living. Wht must it go up on a screen at a conference? It’s like saying let’s be honest. Oh, so this year we’re going to be honest. But next year, maybe not and last year it didn’t matter. Cost prudence matters all the time. Why is it up there? Well, that’s up there because we have to cut costs in order to increase profit.

And I’m suggesting to you that there is a better way rather than cut costs. Charge the customer more. Now, follow this here. Because of all this nonsense of cutting costs, what does the CEO know is going to happen next? They know that as a result, if we follow this recipe, the next thing that’s going to happen is customers are going to be not very happy. So the CEO puts up the next slide, the next thing that says make sure we increase customer satisfaction because customer satisfaction only goes through the floor because you’ve already cut costs, you’ve canceled and not enough staff on the counter. We know it’s going – so he has pre-empted all this. Now, there is a fifth objective that someone wrote for him or her and they’ve forgotten it. So they’ll run back to their notes and they’ll say, ‘Yes, the fifth priority for the year is – oh, yes. Let’s have fun.’

You’re telling me to have fun? It’s like I’m – you know, it’s like saying I’m about to tell you a joke and it’s very funny and you’ll really laugh. And you think, just shut up and tell me the joke. You don’t pre-empt that. You don’t say, ‘Oh, we’re going to have a great deal of fun.’ I don’t want you to tell me about it. I want to feel it. I want to come to you and say I had fun. Honey, I’m a great lover in bed. Well, shut up and get on with it.

Jonar Nader: Talk, talk, talk. I’m suggesting to you that these priorities that are a fixture of corporate life for retailers and manufacturers alike are doomed to fail and I’m just going to focus on the middle one, cutting costs and I’m going to suggest to you that there is a better way.