The Container Store: A Business Model Built On Empathy

Summary

Business Development is the creation of long-term value for an organization for customers, markets, and relationships (Scott Pollack from Forbes, 2012). Business development usually used for different department in an Organization such as Marketing, Project Management, Product Management, Vendor Management, Sales, Partnership, and cost-saving efforts to extend their jobs. There is a sample case, but I will make a conclusion of the case. For sales department, they will focus on particular market or particular clients, they also will make a certain number of sales worth. With such set goals, the sales department targets the customer base in the new market with their sales strategy. For marketing department, marketing plays a complementary role in achieving sales target. In order to make good and pleasing marketing strategy, this department tend to need huge amount of money. If they lower their budget to the marketing department, it is tend to result as passive. These are the two examples of the department that want/currently developing. So what kind of preparation that we need to do?, we need to define what kind of industries/department that require our competencies to help them in business development.

Abstract

Attracting and retaining the brightest talents.

Tindell ( CEO of Container Store) decided to put his employee first. He said, by taking better care of our staff than anyone else (with more pay and training), they will in turn take better care of our customers than our competitors do. Which means we can retain customers.

Developing trusting relationships with customers.

Tindell asks his salespeople to forge real, trusting relationship with customers. In turn, salespeople are given complete freedom to try to understand the needs of their customers in face-to-face relationships.

Creating win-win relationships with suppliers

Most of The Container Store’s suppliers are small manufactures that could easily go under if the company stopped placing orders with them. Tindell introduced operational processes to protect suppliers. The Container Store co-finances the development of new products, places orders during recessions to ensure that factories carry on operating, and always pays on time (and sometimes even in advance when companies are experiencing cash flow problems).

Protecting your entire ecosystem
Tindell aims to give back to the company’s ecosystem a part of the wealth that is created:
•  The Container Store safeguards jobs in times of crisis. In 2008, when the brand was severely affected by a drop in purchasing power, Tindell took the decision not to dismiss any employees.

Reference: https://business-digest.eu/en/2015/06/09/4225/