These guys and customer loyalty

It was with great pleasure, that I recently watched the documentary "Becoming Warren Buffet", on HBO, and I also listened to a great interview with Petter Stordalen on "Framg?ngspodden" by Alexander P?rleros.

It’s amazing how these two men, with highly varying lifestyles, have each they built their own images–or personal brands–differently, yet have so many things in common.

From my point of view, they definitely understand the real value of customer loyalty when it comes to increasing sales, expanding businesses, and making healthy profits.

Mr Buffet has achieved this by investing and supporting a huge number of companies in virtually every kind of industry. He always makes sure that he (or his company, Berkshire Hathaway) invests in companies with good products or services, and finds a long-term plan both for business, management and staff. Over time, his results have been fantastic. That’s one kind of loyalty.

Now, Mr Stordalen is a completely different story. He is more of a self-made entrepreneur with great energy and a strong personality. His journey from growing up as a bullied young boy in Norway to becoming a wealthy man with almost 14,000 employees in his Choice Hotel Group is nothing short of amazing!

I very much enjoyed hearing how extremely focused he had always been in relation to quality customer experience. “The most important people in our hotels are the reception, house-keeping and breakfast staff. These are the ones that the customers actually meet.”

Both these fantastic men have built a fortune for themselves and their families, while also creating a meaningful life with financial security for hundreds of thousands of employees around the globe.

On top of that, they have made extreme contributions to foundations helping people in need, as well as Mother Nature, who is indeed yearning for a brighter future.

It takes time to build customer loyalty, but it is sooooo worth it.