Creating Value In The
New Age Of Wealth
What Do Your Clients
Want More Than Money?
This is a question every business has to answer on some level. The
greatest opportunities for business growth lie in the areas where price
is no object. Here, selling becomes much easier and competition becomes
irrelevant. There is a kind of wealth people are seeking today that is
about more than just money — a new wealth, which the most successful
companies will make it their business to enhance for all their
clientele.
New Measures For Wealth.
More people around the world are materially wealthy than ever before.
The desire to acquire goods and gather money may always be part of the
fundamental human survival instinct, carried over from our early days as
hunter-gatherers. But more and more individuals are discovering that
their love affair with objects is one that will never be truly
fulfilling. Things are a disappointment. What really moves them are
experiences in which they are able to expand themselves, to increase
their capabilities and, as Harvard Business School professor Shoshanna
Zuboff puts it, achieve “psychological self-determination.”
This self-expansion is the “New Wealth” — a different measure of
prosperity for a different age. Understanding this fundamental desire is
key to providing what people truly want, what they will find most
rewarding, and what they will be willing to pay for.
The Experience of New Wealth.
What, then, does this New Wealth entail? What is it that people want
most in this age? Here are 12 qualities that make up the experience of
New Wealth:
Meaning:
They feel that they are at the forefront of economic, political,
cultural, and social progress.
Purpose:
They feel that they are demonstrating through their activities and
achievements how life can be for everyone else.
Capability:
They feel that the new tools and systems provided by microtechnology
lead to ever increasing powers of creativity, productivity, and
cooperation.
Opportunity:
They feel that things will always get bigger and better, and that their
future is only limited by their imagination.
Independence:
They feel that they are in control of the forces and factors that make
their future bigger and better.
Influence: They feel that they are important people within their society
— respected and admired.
Significance:
They feel that what they contribute to others is greater than what they
receive — and that their success is justified by the value they create.
Health:
They feel that age is an attitude, and that being perpetually young is a
function of being motivated, productive, and useful.
Enjoyment:
They feel that the contribution they make to society entitles them to
the best that society offers in the way of luxury, entertainment,
recreation, and learning.
Ease:
They feel that their personally-generated success entitles them to be
supported and served by the best abilities of other people.
Income:
They feel that their ability to make money is constantly growing, and
that the opportunities for doing so are always increasing.
Assets:
They feel that they will always have more money than they need, and that
this surplus is a growing source of confidence, creativity, and
capability.
“Haves” and “Have-nots.”
The disparity between the “haves” and the “have-nots” in our world is
vast. But never before has the veil between them been more permeable.
Many “haves” who inherited their status or counted on a bureaucracy to
provide for them for the rest of their lives have been abandoned. Their
bureaucratic thinking and skills prove to be of no help to them in this
new economy.
At the same time, many people who would be considered “have-nots” have
developed a fluency with microtechnology, developed new forms of value,
and crossed over into prosperity. They’re not motivated by status, but
by growth and learning, so their future is unlimited.
The next century belongs to those who can acquire the characteristics of
the New Wealth — then help others acquire them. Where bureaucracies
foster dependence on them, successful entrepreneurial organizations will
thrive by fostering empowerment in the individual. The experience this
creates is incredibly rewarding, both for those who provide it and those
who receive it. If you are a source of increased freedom and ability in
some aspect of another’s life, price will never be an issue, because
they will always perceive you as “worth it” for the transformation you
provide
© 2007 The Strategic Coach
The
Strategic Coach
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