Last April, I received a surprise phone call:
“COVID has been a real wake-up call for me. I don’t know why I’m working this hard and building my company. I have a family member who needs me more than my employees and clients need me. We need to spend more time together. I’m going to keep a few clients, lay off my team, and shut down the office in Atlanta.”
The pandemic suddenly pushed this client to re-think their purpose.
This CEO’s existential crisis was real…Why did his company exist? Was it to enrich his clients’ lives, grow his bottom line, or a mix of the two? When he asked “how do we make a difference for our customers in the post-pandemic world,” he did not feel inspired nor motivated to pursue those prior dreams.
I applaud him for making this tough decision. Now he works part-time for a nonprofit and advises a small cadre of clients from his home office, freeing him up to spend time with his beloved. And he’s not looking back.
Defining your noble purpose is not some gauzy, philosophical meditation on life. It’s a matter of whether we thrive or survive as business leaders in an unprecedented time of change and chaos.
The research also proves that purpose-driven organizations stand heads and shoulders above their peers.
Reliable studies from Jim Stengel, former CMO of P&G, as well as HBR report that companies who are purpose-driven outperform shareholder-driven companies by as much as 350%. A Conference Board/EY study highlights how purposeful companies outperform the stock market by 42%.
And we are seeing this statistic play out in real time, for example as part of the Business Roundtable, where 181 CEOs pledged to redefine the purpose of an organization, shifting their focus towards stakeholders, rather than shareholders. COVID has also been an inflection point for many organizations to reevaluate their raison d’etre.
The takeaway? Purpose has gone mainstream. It’s not about tag lines, it’s about the bottom line.
In this episode of the Mindful Marketer Life Stream, we were joined by Lisa Earle McLeod. Lisa’s passion for creating purpose in organizations evolved from a Georgia sign company that she and her husband Bob once owned, and Lisa has now worked with companies, such as Kimberly Clark, P&G, and Pfizer to create purpose-driven growth. She has authored several books, including Selling with Noble Purpose.
Together we unpack this question: WHY should I, and how can I, market with noble purpose in the middle of a pandemic—or beyond?
Here are a few highlights:
- How purpose-driven companies outperform peers by as much as 350% (1:03)
- The two reasons why noble purpose is extremely important to marketers today (6:23)
- The true definition of noble purpose for today’s organizations (8:00)
- Managing the tension between short-term revenue and long term brand repute (16:57)
- Virtual event strategies: how to weave your noble purpose into your sales kickoffs (24:00)
- Goodbye, use cases. Hello, customer impact stories (24:45)
- Our favorite, proven strategies for leading effective meetings and shifting team behaviors (26:00)
- Innovation acceleration: How COVID has shifted our business models-overnight (39:00)
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