Business Coach on Good Decision Making

This transcript features Arthur Greeno (Owner of two Chick-fil-A franchises) and Clay Clark (Founder and COO of Thrive15.com, The top business coach in town) talking about how to inspire good decision making with your wallet.

Clay:    Arthur Greeno, how are your business coach clients, my friend?

Arthur:    I’m great.

Clay:    Hey, I’m excited to be with you this morning. If at any point I harass you, or my quality control standards dip down a little bit, just kick me under the busines coach table, okay?

Arthur:    Really?

Clay:    Well, no, no, no. Please don’t. I wasn’t being candid.

    We’re talking about business coach merit-based pay and using the wallet to inspire good decisions. Now, Arthur, in the Service Profit Chain, that is a book written by some Harvard professors, they write, “Customers don’t buy products or services. They buy results.” Somebody watching might say, “Well, obviously.” But just to get a quick, unbiased comparison between 2 organizations that we all know about, and how merit-based pay really does make a difference, think about this for a second. This is according to trackinginfo.com, or you can check out Bloomberg. It’s public knowledge.

    UPS in 2013 made about $4 billion dollars, about $4 billion dollars in 2013, roughly. If you’re watching this and you’re like, “No, it was $3.9.” It’s okay. Get over it. It’s about $4 billion. Now, according to the New York Times, in that same year, 2013, the good folks at the USPS lost nearly $5 billion dollars. So potentially, I mean, think about this, UPS made $4 billion. United States Postal Service lost $5 billion dollars. Now, UPS is known for their tight management systems and their merit-based pay, while the USPS has become kind of a punchline of jokes. People always joke about the USPS, and it’s kind of known for its massive yearly losses.

    I think for most people watching this, this seems like common sense. Yet in many businesses  and business coach throughout the world, it seems like we’re not setting up these merit-based pay systems. So it’s like, it seems like it’s common sense that you would pay people based on performance, but yet in most businesses it doesn’t happen. I know, as an example, in the first 5 years I was in business, I did not have merit-based pay in place. I just paid you and I paid you well, and I expected you to do your best, and it didn’t happen.

    I want to get into this here. Arthur, one of the things I’ve noticed as I’ve studied QuickTrip and the Marriott and Disneyworld and Apple, is they all have some sort of merit-based pay system in place. Just so we don’t lose anybody, I’m going to read the definition of what the word merit means, and then I’m going to interrogate you with some questions about implementing this stuff.

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Arthur:    Lay it on me business coach.

Clay:    Now according to Webster, here’s the definition of the word merit. It says, “A good quality or feature that deserves to be praised.” So basically, a merit-based pay system involves paying employees based upon their performance and their results, not their intentions. Let’s get into this real quick at Chick-fil-A. You have thousands of customers that come in. Two thousand of them a day?

Arthur:    Right around there.

Clay:    How many employees do you have?

Arthur:    About 150.

Clay:    Do you have employees that you’ve hired before that did the worst possible performance that you allowed?

Arthur:    Yes.

Clay:    Do you have some employees that would just go over and above, like for whatever reason they have a desire to be awesome.

Arthur:    Yep.

Clay:    Did you pay the guy who’s awesome more than the person who did a bad job?

Arthur:    Yes.

Clay:    Okay. Walk me through the specifics. Let’s say I work for you at Chick-fil-A.

Arthur:    Okay.

Clay:    And I’m working the front counter, and this guy over here’s working the front counter. Let’s say that I am not a hard worker, I do not do a good job, and this person does a good job. Walk me through how you pay us differently. How does that process work?

Arthur:    Right. For us, we kind of have a standard entry level of pay. If … It depends on their availability and what they can work. If they’re 15 years old, or if they’re 17 years old, their experience level. But then once they get in, then it’s really about how are they performing? What does training look like? When you first get an employee in there, a lot of times the only thing you really have to go by is really, how is their training program working. For example, Chick-fil-A has an online training program that employees can even go online and do their training from home. Now, I don’t encourage this, because we’re supposed to pay people to train. However, it’s always super impressive when you know that employee that’s worked for you for 2 weeks, and they come in, and at the end of the week we can see how much training they’ve done, and they’ve knocked out 10 modules.

Clay:    So over here is the employee who’s watched all 10 modules, and there is me, and I have not watched a single module.

Arthur:    That’s right.

Clay:    We came in at the same pay. We’re both making, I’m just going to make up a number. Let’s say we’re both making $10 an hour. I’m not saying that’s the number. I’m just using an example. We both start off at $10 an hour. At what point do you start to separate and pay this person more than me.

Arthur:    It could be as quick as 30 days, because within 30 days you’re going to see a definite … I mean, this person’s going to be doing more. If they know more, they’re going to be doing more. They’re going to be engaging with the business coach customers better. They’re going to be staying busy. If you are not staying busy, for one, you might not even make it 30 days.