Sam Walton: 10 Rules for Building a Successful Business Value Innovation Be Different Setting Goals Motivating People Motivating and Communicating Attitude Motivation Crosspollination of Ideas New People Partnership Ten3 Business e-Coach: global success Burning Desire Committment Quotes Stand Out from Your Competitors Rules 1 to 5 Rules 6 to 10 Sam Walton: 10 Rules for Building a Successful Business  

Sam Walton credited the rapid growth of Walmart to his associates.

He relied on them to give customers the great shopping experience that would keep them coming back.

~ Walmart: Our History

  

 

 
 

Rule 6. Celebrate your success

Find some humor in your failures. Don't take yourself so seriously. Loosen up, and everybody around you will loosen up.

 

The Fun Factor

Examples

IDEO: Fun Culture

  

 
 

Have fun. Show enthusiasm – always. When all else fails, put on a costume and sing a silly song. Then make everybody else sing with you. Don't do a hula on Wall Street. It's been done. Think up your own stunt. All of this is more important, and more fun, than you think, and it really fools competition. "Why should we take those cornballs at Wal-Mart seriously?"

  

 

 
 

Rule 7. Listen to everyone in your company and figure out ways to get them talking

The folks on the front lines – the ones who actually talk to the customer – are the only ones who really know what's going on out there. You'd better find out what they know. This really is what total quality is all about. To push responsibility down in your organization, and to force good ideas to bubble up within it, you must listen to what your associates are trying to tell you.

  

Customer Experience (CX)

CX Plan

CX Management

Employee Involvement

Suggestion System

GE Work Out

  

 

 

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Rapid Learning

Winning Organization

  

 

 

 
 

Rule 8. Exceed your customer's expectations

If you do, they'll come back over and over.

 

Synergistic Motivation

  

 
 

Give them what they want – and a little more. Let them know you appreciate them. Make good on all your mistakes, and don't make excuses – apologize. Stand behind everything you do.

The two most important words I ever wrote were on that first Wal-Mart sign: "Satisfaction Guaranteed." They're still up there, and they have made all the difference.

  

 

 

 

 
Sam Walton's rules for buiding a great business

Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish.

Sam Walton

 
 

Rule 4. Communicate everything you possibly can to your partners

  

Motivate and Communicate

  

 
 

The more they know, the more they'll understand. The more they understand, the more they'll care. Once they care, there's no stopping them. If you don't trust your associates to know what's going on, they'll know you really don't consider them partners. Information is power, and the gain you get from empowering your associates more than offsets the risk of informing your competitors.

  

 

 

Vadim Koelnikov personal logo

Rapid Learning

Winning Organization

  

 

 

 
 

Rule 5. Appreciate everything your associates do for the business

  

The Power of Recognition

  

 
 

A paycheck and a stock option will buy one kind of loyalty. But all of us like to be told how much somebody appreciates what we do for them. We like to hear it often, and especially when we have done something we're really proud of. Nothing else can quite substitute for a few well-chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise. They're absolutely free and worth a fortune.

Previous 5 Rules

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rule 8: Exceed your customer's expectations. If you do, they'll come back over and over. Give them what they want – and a little more. Let them know you appreciate them. Make good on all your mistakes, and don't make excuses – apologize. Stand behind everything you do. The two most important words I ever wrote were on that first Wal-Mart sign: "Satisfaction Guaranteed." They're still up there, and they have made all the difference.

Rule 9: Control your expenses better than your competition. This is where you can always find the competitive advantage. For twenty-five years running – long before Wal-Mart was known as the nation's largest retailer – we've ranked No. 1 in our industry for the lowest ratio of expenses to sales. You can make a lot of different mistakes and still recover if you run an efficient operation. Or you can be brilliant and still go out of business if you're too inefficient.

Rule 10: Swim upstream. Go the other way. Ignore the conventional wisdom. If everybody else is doing it one way, there's a good chance you can find your niche by going in exactly the opposite direction. But be prepared for a lot of folks to wave you down and tell you you're headed the wrong way. I guess in all my years, what I heard more often than anything was: a town of less than 50,000 population cannot support a discount store for very long.