Put your community first
Your business takes a lot from the surrounding community. When
you make a sale, you obviously take money in return. But you also
take your customers’ time to make a sale. Your building uses water,
electricity and other utilities. If your business is large enough and
located in an outlying area, you might have needed special zoning variances to get your building built in the first place.
Yes, your business likely gives back a lot, too. You probably
pump a lot of money into the local economy through jobs and
taxes. You probably pay your utility bills on time, and if your product is good, customers should want to take the time and money to
purchase it.
However, Boyle says simply having a transactional relationship
with the communities you serve isn’t going far enough. To truly
gain a presence in a community, people need to see your business
as an active participant in the community.
“There are a couple of reasons why it’s important to be an active
member of the community,” Boyle says. “One, it’s a quality of life issue.
I live here, my family lives here, and we want the communities we live
in to thrive, and the way you do that is by giving back.
“Two, having a thriving community is critical to the success of
your business, and the only way you are going to be able to affect
that is by having people who are involved in trying to make a difference in the community and trying to make it better.”
The most effective way to do that is to lead by example. If you
make community involvement a priority, you will develop employees who value it, as well.
To that end, Boyle has instituted a periodically held community
appreciation day in southeast Michigan. It’s a program that was
first attempted by National City in Cleveland but has experienced
its greatest success in the Detroit area.
As part of its community appreciation days, National City closes
all of its retail offices for half the day, during which employees are
asked to participate in a variety of community service projects.
“We send about 700 people to 24 or 25 different agencies to give
back for half a day,” Boyle says. “That is probably the most powerful thing we can do, from a community perspective, for the internal folks here at National City. It has created a real desire on their
part to continue to give back, and we’ll be doing it again this
month.”
If you are new to a city, as Boyle was when he took over his
region of National City, he says it’s a necessity for you to get
involved in the community, both on a personal and business level.
People will be more responsive to you if you offer help before asking for it.
“When you come to a new community and you don’t know anyone, you have to start building a network from scratch,” Boyle
says. “Getting out there and getting involved, getting to meet some
people, it’s very important. To me, it’s always about giving first and
asking how I can help them before I ask for any help. So I’m always
finding ways to step up and meet someone else’s needs, and then
I can kind of foster relationships with them to help me build my
network in the market.”
If you and your employees take the time to connect with the surrounding community, you will be able to measure the results for
your business.
“You can measure some of what you get for your efforts,” Boyle
says. “In our case, we can look in terms of the business we might
be able to do with some of the nonprofit entities. When you are
active in giving back and they are a recipient of that, we have seen
a number of people within these organizations that we work with,
and the organizations themselves, choose to do business with
National City.
“We don’t really put pencil to paper to measure that per se, but it is
something we focus on.”