This year, people all over the world were surprised (or maybe not), to see that Microsoft CEO Bill Gates had failed to retain his top spot as the richest man in the world. Apparently, Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos has grabbed his spot and was hailed as the new richest man in the world with astounding net worth of $82.7 billion USD! How did Jeff Bezos achieve the limelight of his glory and how did he boost Amazon? In this post, we’ll unveil Jeff Bezos’ secrets, as well as his techniques on how he brought Amazon to its worldwide popularity and how he became successful, not only in the business field, but also in his personal life.
Focus More On Your Customers’ Needs
We all know that the golden rule in business is customer service. And yet most online businesses nowadays fail because they can’t fully grasp what it means. Well, maybe Jeff Bezos’ definition of customer’s service will help you understand on how to serve your customers better. Jeff Bezos already knows that the advantage of establishing an online business is to analyze your customer’s behavior. You have to know what they want, what they don’t want, and what features could be improved. That’s why, you’ll find how Amazon is constantly adding features here and there and upgrading their services and subscriptions to find out what their customers wants.
Most of the time, the customers are satisfied with it. If they aren’t, they send back some feedback about their complaints and that’s when Amazon will take action to improve their features. Furthermore, you don’t have to be afraid to take risks just to improve your customer service. Take an example from Jeff Bezos himself, despite receiving negative feedback and scolding from publishers, he still encourage his customers to leave book reviews, to never be afraid of voicing out their thoughts. In the long run, people find it incredibly helpful to use as a basis whether a particular product is good or not, based on reviews.
Practice Frugality
Take a Sneak Peek On Amazon’s Office in Silicon Valley
You might raise your eyebrows about this since you know how Amazon is now spending billions of dollars just to upgrade their features and services (as part of their customer service, of course). In fact, they’re willing to invest billions just for their latest drone delivery experiment. However, you should know that Amazon started out as a simple company. At that time, Jeff knew that their resources were very limited, that’s why they needed to be very careful about spending them. This, in turn, allowed them to focus on two important things: delivering the best customer service and continuous innovation.
Making Smaller Teams Increases Company’s Productivity
Jeff Bezos Implements Two Pizza Team Rule to Increase Company’s Productivity
We all know that teamwork is the key to a company’s success. However, Jeff Bezos wanted to tweak and insert his own rules when it came to teamwork to ensure Amazon’s success. When he was still starting out, he usually paired up his employees into smaller team. His golden rule is this: no team should be large enough that you couldn’t feed them with two pizzas. Today, this rule is also known as the Two-Pizza team. Why? It’s because Jeff believes that an incredibly large team working for a particular project won’t do you any good.
It’s either some employees, who are part of the team, will be too lazy to do their part (because they’ll assume that the other one is doing their job), or they’ll be too unmotivated to work because the team isn’t in sync. They couldn’t voice out their own opinions and insight and have a significant contribution to the project. But if your team is smaller, though, all of you will be forced to do your job well and participate to ensure the success of your project. This also encourages every member to work hard and be productive.
Think Long-Term
Amazon Kindle Let’s You Store Thousands of eBooks and Read them On The Go
Starting out your own business is never easy. It’s a big deal and that’s why you have to work very hard and always think in a long-term. If you only dream to earn big money, then you probably won’t survive. Your business might only exist for a year or two. Jeff Bezos’ vision for Amazon is that it’s going to become a giant online retailer in the world and that’s why all of the products, features, and services he makes are all for long term. Let’s take a notable example from his e-books. When the first e-book entered the market, most publishers priced it the same as the print edition. This turned customers off from purchasing. Why would they purchase when they can grab a printed book for the same price?
That’s why Jeff Bezos relies heavily on data to determine the average or ideal price for e-books. He determines that the ideal prices for eBooks range from %0.99-9.99 USD. Although their sales lost around 5 dollars per purchase, Jeff didn’t relent and continued with his e-book business. When the publishers finally caught up that most customers prefer to buy eBooks around this range, they have started adopting it, resulting in a drastic increase in eBooks sales. This long-term success also opened up an opportunity for Jeff to create one of his most successful legacy products of their company: Kindle.
