The other day was running a training session in Sydney. This guy turned up late, and was basically a royal pain in the arse - think a high school student up the back who knows the teacher can't give him a detention. Continually interrupting, yawning loudly, wrapping his knuckles on the desk. After about 40 minutes I said to him that he's making it impossible to run the session and if he has any issues about the software that he needs to discuss we'll have a chat about it after the session. He really cracked it at that point, and said I was being paranoid etc.

So while I was waiting at the airport I logged into our database and wrote a file note about what happened. The next morning I showed the note to my boss, and he called up our sales agent who had being dealing with the gentleman in question. That afternoon our sales agent called this guy up and said our company wouldn't take anyone on as client who was going to treat our employees like that, and that we were withdrawing the agreement worth $10,000 a year to our business to work with him. The customer asked if he could come down to Melbourne to meet with my boss. My boss told him he wouldn't meet with him until he apologized to me. So I got the tail between the legs phone call apologizing. After he met with my boss he signed the agreement anyway, and is on notice that if anything happens like that again the agreement will be terminated. Good way to make your employees feel valued.

I think this is outstanding leadership from Ben's boss. It is a flat out demonstration that how Ben feels is more important than a $10,000 sale, and sends a fantastic message to the whole team.

In the Love Your Business System we say choose your customers, and only make a sale that has you and the customer feel better. This is also an excellent example of this principle, and why its so important.

What can you do today to demonstrate to your team that they are valued?