The art of business in Singapore

original posting Antananarivo 2001

A direct 8 hour flight, with Air Madagascar, brought us to our business destination Singapore. This was before “911” and travel was both enjoyable and easy. No visas, just one security check at the airport. Everything done with speed and minimum hassle.

5:30am, a jovial taxi driver volunteered historical and touristic information on our way to the hotel. Figuring that we were not tourist (the suit and tie kind of gave us away), he switched to business information, pointing places of interest for us “IT people” as he called us.
Before we reached our hotel, the taxi driver made a stop over by a licensed local money changer. Mustapha has the best rates he said. Having only this stranger's word as proof, we exchanged some money, just enough until the next day. As it turned out Mustapha has indeed the best rates in Singapore and unlike banks, no service charge.

Beyond the travel brochures this is what we can say. There is a culture of excellence in Singapore. People know their products. They can skip their sales script and maintain a meaningful discussion. During our stay, we witnessed this pattern over and over again. People tend to go beyond professional competence. They reach out to you, build rapport, communicate. They go out of their way to make business simple and accessible. They strive for speed and rapid quality response. In doing so they are able to promote an important asset they cherish ... Their nation.

Back at home, the new start-up I worked for struggled with growing pains. We decided to extract some lessons from our fruitful and enlightening trip. We figured there were three major items we witnessed.

First, People were absolutely confident in their ability to be of service in their respective field. People radiated self-confidence. Its the kind of self-confidence that only comes from being an expert in what they do and experience with people. Like us, they value competence, hard work, and education (formal or other wise). But more importantly they did not hesitate to inquire learn and continually improve themselves.

Second, everyone was a salesperson (officially or not) . Most people we met possessed the uncanny ability to build rapport and hone in on things that matter to us. It was as if everybody somehow had the salesperson gene. Not the pest that tries to relieve you of your hard earned money, but the one that genuinely know he has a solution for you. To sell, to promote, not necessarily for themselves but as a friendly service, naturally.

Finally, we could not help but notice how everything was done to make doing business as simple as possible. From our landing at Changi airport, all the way to the bank, and back at our offices, things were in a constant uncomplicated flow.

We figured that was our target to improve and grow our business. We needed to train our people, streamline our products and speedup our business process.
We started with a review of our staffs competences. Did everybody have a clear understanding of their job? What were the measurable outcome? Did everybody have a correct level of familiarity with our business and products? What about the door man? Could he explain in two or three sentences what was done inside the building?

Competence = Experience * ( Training + Practice )

This formula rigorously applied to the technical staff, but everybody ought to be capable of demonstrating the products, explain our services, promote our firm and make appropriate referrals to the people in charge of various facets of our business.
Therefore we put in place some training formulas for all the staff. One hour here, one hour there, and later some real seminars to boost familiarity and identity with our products and services.
This made it possible to put in place a system to make doing business with us simple and convivial. Speedy service, responsive communication, easy payments.

Clients are no longer just buying a product from us. They're also coming back because of the experience they get. Our products were simple to use, easy to maintain and upgrade. Our people are accessible, helpful and have a complete knowledge of our offerings.