If You Don’t Have Passion for Your Product, Why Should Your Customer?
Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things.
DENIS DIDEROT, French philosopher
Many books and articles suggest that with the right techniques, anyone can sell anything. The authors of these works seem to imply that you can be successful at selling any product, even if you do not particularly like what you sell. Certainly, some entrepreneurs achieve success without having a positive emotional connection with their goods or services. Steve Chou, the founder of Bumblebee Linens, reports that his online store went from zero earnings to more than $100,000 profit in a single year, despite the fact that he was “not terribly passionate about wedding linens. Decorative pieces of fabric don’t really make me excited and to be honest, I’m not in love with what we sell…. When my wife and I first started our business, it was all about the numbers and whether the business could make enough money so my wife could quit her job.”
Even Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos, a company I wrote about in my book The Zappos Experience: 5 Principles to Inspire, Engage, and WOW, notes that he is “not passionate about shoes at all.” Despite running a company that has an inventory of more than 50,000 varieties of shoes, Tony has reported he owns three pair. Instead, Tony acknowledges that he is “passionate about customer service and company culture,” which may be why Zappos has reached a level of success that most other stores that just sell shoes have not.
While passion for the product may not be necessary for sales success, it certainly differentiates sales leaders from most of their competitors. Additionally, employee passion for the product fuels the emotional engagement of customers and facilitates sustainability. Sales consultant Troy Harrison defines the link between employee passion and customer engagement by suggesting, “Passion is the indefinable something that creates and builds interest and excitement on the part of the customer.” From Troy’s perspective, customer excitement emerges when your people have “a need to make buyers feel the same excitement” that they do. To achieve that level of customer enthusiasm, Troy suggests you have to first sell yourself “on your products or services. If you were in the position of a target customer, would you buy? … All else is meaningless.”
Starbucks chief executive officer Howard Schultz explains the transference of passion slightly differently: “You can walk into any store and you can feel whether the proprietor or the merchant or the person behind the counter has a good feeling about his product. If you walk into a department store today, you are probably talking to a guy who is untrained; he was selling vacuum cleaners yesterday, and now he is in the apparel section. It just does not work.”
Howard consistently transfers his excitement for Starbucks offerings and anchors that enthusiasm to the product that is at the center of the company—coffee. He reports that his enchantment with coffee was heightened in 1982 when he joined Starbucks. As he described in his book Onward, he gained an enriched awareness of the “magic” of coffee and the coffee ritual a year later when he visited Milan, Italy, and experienced coffee artisans who “seemed to be doing a delicate dance as [they] ground coffee beans, steamed milk, pulled shots of espresso, made cappuccinos, and chatted with customers standing side by side at the coffee bar.” Reflecting on his Italian experiences, Howard concluded that espresso, coffee, and cappuccino creation was not a “job” but a “passion.”
To achieve the company’s mission “to inspire and nurture the human spirit—one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time,” leaders at Starbucks crafted a set of principles to be lived daily, the first of which involves passion for:
Our Coffee. It has always been, and will always be, about quality. We’re passionate about ethically sourcing the finest coffee beans, roasting them with great care, and improving the lives of people who grow them. We care deeply about all of this; our work is never done.
In support of this principle, Starbucks leaders have developed a variety of mechanisms to help everyone who comes to work for the company (not just those in customer-facing roles) understand and hopefully gain a deep connection with the rich history of coffee; the journey of coffee from farm to Starbucks cup; the economic, social, and environmental aspects of the coffee industry; and also a sophisticated respect for the special nuances of coffee flavor profiles. In short, Starbucks leaders have produced diverse tools to help Starbucks partners develop or deepen a genuine product passion.
The remainder of this chapter will look at the wide-ranging product passion-enhancing tools that Starbucks deploys internally and examine how those tools build excitement for customers. In the process, you will be challenged to consider how training, corporate rituals, immersive employee experiences, and aligned strategies for product excellence can incite passion in your people and your customers.
When you think of someone who works at Starbucks, you are likely to envision a barista. In fact, many of us have a personal connection with the brand through frequent contact with this group of service providers. As in many large organizations, however, the barista is only one essential part of a complex array of professionals who function across corporate, international, regional, and store-level functions.
While many employees seek careers at Starbucks because of their interest in coffee or as a result of experiences that they have had as customers, a large number of applicants seek employment despite not having had a taste for the primary product the company sells. Virgil Jones, director, Partner Services, at Starbucks, shares his introduction to Starbucks by noting, “I used to walk by Seattle’s Capitol Hill Starbucks store when I was in college, and I knew nothing about coffee or about Starbucks. One day I decided to go inside, and I was confused by a number of items on the board. When the store manager asked if I was a new customer, I said yes, and he responded, ‘I’m going to make you a mocha,’ and he handed it to me. He then said, ‘This one is on me, but I want you to come back, and the next time I’ll introduce you to some of our brewed coffees.’ I walked away that day being impressed. So I did some research on the company, and my junior year in college decided I wanted to work for Starbucks. When I was graduating, I applied for probably 15 to 20 positions at Starbucks and got hired as temporary full-time help for the holiday season in the warehouse.” Like so many other Starbucks partners, Virgil continued to evolve, and professionally grow from that temporary warehouse job into his career as director of the Partner Services team.
While a passion for coffee is not required in order to be hired at Starbucks, new partners across the company do receive a strong introduction to the significance, specialness, and importance of coffee. At the store level, for example, Starbucks on-boards baristas by a “first impressions” meeting with the store manager. That visit typically begins with the new barista experiencing a coffee tasting of the store manager’s favorite coffee and continues with activities and conversation that emphasize the centrality of coffee and the desired Starbucks Experience.
Over the days and weeks that follow, new baristas learn a great deal about coffee-growing regions, trade practices in coffee purchasing, processing methods for removing the coffee bean from the coffee cherry, coffee roast profiles, the skills necessary to pull a high-quality espresso shot, the fundamentals of coffee brewing, steps in coffee tasting, foundational taste characteristics of coffee, and all aspects of preparing Starbucks wide range of beverages and other offerings. This training combines a formal curriculum with individual development discussions and job practice sessions with the new hire’s store manager and an experienced barista who functions as a learning coach.
This coffee education reflects a 70/20/10 growth and development approach. Based on research on how people integrate and utilize new information, new baristas at Starbucks receive approximately 70 percent of their initial coffee education through on-the-job experience and hands-on practice. Another 20 percent of their training is the result of feedback and mentorship from their peers, their learning coach, and store management, and 10 percent is derived from an online modularized curriculum. (See the sidebar for the specific learning blocks presented in Starbucks barista certification training.)
At intervals during the certification training and development process, new partners must pass a knowledge test and demonstrate to their store manager skill competency in tasks such as preparing a cappuccino. While rich knowledge and skills-based education alone do not guarantee that certified baristas will have a passion for the products that they prepare and serve, education and personal growth do increase a barista’s awareness of and appreciation for coffee. Ryan, a Starbucks barista from Denver, Colorado, notes, “After I started working at Starbucks, I changed my drink preference to brewed coffee. I learned so much about different blends and regions. I now love Asian coffee; Sumatra is my go-to drink. I never really knew how much taste could change from coffee to coffee.”
At Starbucks, leaders also help new hires begin to understand the importance of coffee-growing communities and the economic challenges they face. Early training experiences identify coffee as a socially powerful product (in fact, it is one of the world’s most heavily traded agricultural commodities, and it bolsters the economies of many equatorial countries). New Starbucks partners are given insights into the importance of fair trade and price transparency throughout the supply chain of coffee sourcing.
In addition to offering a social context for the substantial social, economic, and political impact of their product, leaders encourage baristas (both new and veteran) to view themselves as artisans of a handcrafted product. In essence, a person can become passionate not only about the coffee itself, but also about the artistry involved in its creation. Howard Schultz notes in Onward, “Pouring espresso is an art, one that requires the barista to care about the quality of the beverage. If the barista only goes through the motions, if he or she does not care and produces an inferior espresso that is too weak or too bitter, then Starbucks has lost the essence of what we set out to do 40 years ago: inspire the human spirit. I realize this is a lofty mission for a cup of coffee, but this is what merchants do. We take the ordinary … and give it new life, believing that what we create has the potential to touch others’ lives because it touched ours.”
REFLECTION ON CONNECTION
1. Are you driving product knowledge and certifying service excellence from the onset of employment?
2. What is your team’s overall level of product passion? How does it compare to the product passion levels at the best service providers you have encountered?
3. What first impressions do you create for new hires so that they can be intrigued by the products that you provide? What are the nuances or uniquely important aspects of your offerings?
Can you imagine how different our lives would be if most business owners worked to infuse product passion into their entire workforce? What if those owners also believed it was their job to improve or elevate the products that they touch? How would your next visit to your dry cleaner, post office, electronics store, or supermarket be different? Better yet, imagine how your customers might feel if all your people were passionate about your products and felt responsible for elevating them with each touch.
While the opportunity for developing a passion for coffee and the artistry of its preparation is built into the formative learning experiences of Starbucks new hires, the company’s leadership understands that this passion is reinforced, sustained, and deepened through corporate rituals, immersive learning opportunities, and core business strategy. But before we look at the Starbucks approach, let’s define corporate rituals and explore their relevance to developing a culture of product passion.
For some people, the word ritual tends to conjure up images of religious or personal behavior; however, S. Chris Edmonds, a senior consultant with the Ken Blanchard Companies and coauthor of Leading at a Higher Level, defines corporate rituals “as events which communicate and reinforce desired performance and values.” Chris believes, “Few senior leaders leverage corporate rituals as an intentional strategy to define and reinforce a company’s desired culture.”
Edmonds provides a structure for looking at rituals and criteria to assess their effectiveness. Specifically, he breaks leadership rituals down into those oriented toward celebration and those directed toward communications. In assessing the effectiveness of either approach to ritual, Chris suggests that intentional efforts should be made to “ensure that all corporate rituals create a common bond, inspire commitment and innovation, and build the ‘finely woven cloth’ of an effective culture.” Let’s look at how Starbucks leadership builds a culture of product passion through celebration and communication rituals, and also define ways in which you can do the same.
When I described the first impressions meeting between a newly hired Starbucks barista and a store manager, you were given a preview of one of the key celebration rituals at Starbucks—the coffee-tasting ritual. When a store manager celebrates the first day with a new hire by preparing a coffee tasting, that manager is producing an event that both communicates the desired behavior of learning the unique flavor profiles of coffee and demonstrates values that support coffee passion.
The coffee-tasting ritual is also a prominent feature at major cultural events for Starbucks. For example at the October 2012 Leadership Conference, Dub Hay, then senior vice president, Global Coffee Authority, who was nearing retirement after 10 years at Starbucks (with whom I have done coffee tastings in Costa Rica), led the assembled store managers and other leaders in a tasting of the newly released Starbucks® Thanksgiving Blend. Addressing the crowd, Dub noted, “I can’t tell you all how humbling it is to be on this stage … knowing all the work and care and love that went into this coffee that now sits in your hand. This is probably one of the largest coffee tastings I’ve done in my history at Starbucks. I can’t think of a better combination than to be tasting Starbucks Thanksgiving Blend with 10,000 store managers, the 200 Houston partners who delivered their coffee to you, and, as you see ringing the stage, the senior leadership team and managing directors from around the world.” Dub then led a massive tasting. Just think about the logistics of having 10,000 Starbucks partners taste a cup of coffee simultaneously. Some might say that such an undertaking is a pointless exercise; however, Starbucks leadership sees it as a ritual that reinforces the essence of the brand.
Starbucks district manager Tisha Kimoto explains how she integrates coffee tasting into her leadership ritual, noting, “With the district manager role, we are not in the office, we are always in the field; I get to meet with the store managers. We start the meetings with coffee tastings. What do we not know about the coffee? What more can we learn? And for us it really is, how can we be passionate about the product that we sell?” Howard Schultz, Dub Hay, leaders and district managers with store managers, store managers with new hires and their teams … the coffee-tasting ritual is alive and well at Starbucks.
This ritualization of coffee tasting is further supported by guidelines set for employees throughout the company. For example, new hires are encouraged to complete a “Coffee Passport” within their first 90 days of employment. A Coffee Passport (see next page) serves as a road map and journal to guide partners through tasting all of the coffees that Starbucks offers. A barista from New York notes, “When I was first learning about coffee three years ago at a Starbucks in Connecticut, I tasted Caffè Verona®. The partner who was doing that tasting poured some mocha sauce into a cup. We smelled the mocha and we smelled the Verona, and it was a newfound experience full of joy. I realized there were different depths of flavor to coffee that I never knew existed. I thought coffee was just something to keep you awake when you were tired. So that was the beginning of my love affair with coffee. Part of Starbucks training is completing the Coffee Passport…. You have to taste and describe every coffee that we offer. I finished my passport within the first two weeks of my time at Starbucks. In the process, I discovered some of my favorite coffees and my least favorite coffees, and I couldn’t stop telling people about the vast array of flavors that existed between coffees. It was a brand-new world. It was exciting, and my manager seemed to understand my excitement. She nurtured my passion for coffee, and I never stopped.”
A page from the Starbucks Coffee Passport.
Similarly, Samantha Yarwood, director of marketing, Switzerland and Austria, shares how she has seen new baristas not only get excited about the coffees they taste but also lead others through tastings: “I met a new barista who had been with the company for only two weeks when she conducted a coffee tasting of her own. I wish I had a picture that I could share of the amazing presentation she arranged. It was incredible. She presented chocolates, cookies, cakes, and fruit that reflected and paired well with the coffees she was tasting with us. She was so engaged and engaging. I later found out that she stayed up the night before to prepare all the food items she had presented. That coffee tasting left me saying, ‘Wow.’”
Coffee-tasting rituals and the Coffee Passport tool serve to create a patterned exploration of the richness and complexity of coffee mastery that opens up many Starbucks partners to a genuine fascination with and passion for the product. All the while, these rituals ingrain coffee’s centrality in the way things are done throughout the company.
Starbucks leaders have also ritualized corporate storytelling. Rather than providing messages that just describe the “what” and “how” of their products, leaders listen for and share stories that help connect partners to coffee farmers and the journey that coffee takes before it is served at Starbucks. While I was talking to Howard Schultz about the rituals of communication at Starbucks, he noted, “One of the strengths of Starbucks is storytelling and being able to infuse an authentic, genuine story about the journey of a coffee—where it comes from or how we do things…. Those stories are enriched by the passion and feeling we have about what we do. You cannot fake that. The customer is too smart, and our people are too smart. If our people do not believe in what you might loosely describe as the love story behind the coffee or the truth behind it, it is over before it starts.”
While the methods of story delivery at Starbucks are varied (one-on-one, group, or video), the themes of communication regularly highlight the coffee journey, the coffee-farming experience, and the impact of ethical sourcing on the lives of suppliers. Clarice Turner, senior vice president, U.S. Business, shares, “As we educate our partners on our coffee, we talk about how the sale of coffee beverages changes the lives of farmers around the world, and we have a lot of specific examples that we use to demonstrate the importance of fair pricing and transparency.” Through storytelling, Starbucks leaders humanize and connect Starbucks partners to the very real impact of farmer support and ethical sourcing efforts like C.A.F.E. (Coffee and Farmer Equity) Practices. C.A.F.E. Practices were created in partnership with Conservation International (a nonprofit environmental organization committed to benefiting humanity through bio-diversity and protection of nature) to define guidelines to help grow coffee in a way that sustains farmers and the planet. By deploying measurable objectives, including Starbucks quality standards; transparency of verified payments across the coffee supply chain; third-party-verified measures of safe, humane, and fair working conditions; and environmental leadership, Starbucks is able to work with coffee farmers to increase sustainability.
Kelly Goodejohn, Starbucks director, Ethical Sourcing, exemplifies the effectiveness of leadership storytelling by sharing, “I was in Costa Rica recently visiting small-holder farms who were participating in C.A.F.E. Practices. Given that many of these farmers only work a couple of acres of land, everything they earned is essential for their families to thrive.” Kelly notes that, as always, she was greatly affected by the uplifting stories shared by farmers concerning the impact of the premiums Starbucks pays in accord with the farmer’s level of engagement with C.A.F.E. Practices. Many talked about how those premiums made the difference in their children getting a quality education and in some cases going on to universities.
Noting that her visit followed a rainy period in the steep hills and mountains of the Tarrazú region, Kelly reported being particularly troubled by a farmer who said that he had been participating in C.A.F.E. Practices in a limited way. Kelly shares, “The farmer pointed to a hill where an enormous landslide had sheared off coffee trees. He then told me he hadn’t been paying enough attention to erosion control measures, and as such he had lost a third of his trees in one rainy time of the year. He wasn’t going to be able to harvest coffee there for about three to five years, and a third of his income was lost. The look on his face expressed regret and sorrow for the impact of his choices. That touched me deeply. He then asked if Starbucks could help him manage his farm more effectively, and our agronomists are working to give him the technical tools so that in the future, he’ll be able to mitigate some of the severe impacts of weather change. It is these experiences that result not only in passion for the coffee but a deep compassion for the people and families who work with us all along the journey.”
Stories of coffee farming, the journey of the bean, and ethical sourcing (like the one provided by Kelly) clearly engage Starbucks partners. Katie McMahon, national account executive, Branded Solutions, shares, “One of the images that resonates with me is the image of the coffee farmer. You look at their hands and they are covered in dirt. For me, that’s at the core of who we are as a company, and I think about them every day when I work with other partners and customers.” Barista Ruth Anderson notes, “Our coffees travel so far before they reach us. I often hear about the first 10 feet of the coffee’s journey and about the lives of coffee farmers. I care that our product is ethically sourced and that the people at the beginning and throughout the coffee journey are cared for. As a barista, I need to be at my personal best to deliver that coffee for the last 10 feet of that coffee’s journey as I craft drinks for our customers. I see my job not just as a coffee preparer. I see my job as having impact on the world through coffee.”
Aristotle once said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act but a habit.” While the celebration and communication rituals in your business will certainly differ from those of Starbucks, isn’t it worthwhile to examine the habits, rituals, and messages that you deploy? Are they facilitating emotional connections, a sense of community, and product passion excellence? By effectively building authentic rituals into your business, you will also define unique aspects of your culture and reinforce your business’s broader purpose, particularly when the rituals are supported by enriched experiential learning and a congruent business strategy.
REFLECTION ON CONNECTION
1. How have you used celebration rituals to increase the connection between your staff members and your products?
2. What, if any, parallels to the Coffee Passport program at Starbucks do you have? What might you create?
3. Overall, how effectively have you used corporate rituals to intentionally “create a common bond, inspire commitment and innovation, and build the ‘finely woven cloth’” of a culture of product passion?
It is one thing to have leaders telling stories that will help link staff members to product passion and quite another to place staff members directly in positions where they can garner stories of their own. When it comes to conversations about coffee farming and the impact of ethical sourcing, Starbucks leaders have taken a number of different approaches, including having coffee farmers tour Starbucks stores and a rather unusual program called the Origin Experience. If you would like to get a glimpse of an Origin Experience trip, please visit: http://tinyurl.com/mrrk5wr or direct your QR reader here:
Valerie O’Neil, Starbucks senior vice president, Partner Resources and Brand Leadership, shares the idea behind the Origin Experience trips: “My team and I spearheaded the pilot program where we took 35 to 40 partners from U.S. and Americas to Costa Rica. We took Asia-Pacific partners to Indonesia, and then Europe and Middle Eastern partners to Tanzania. They spent a weeklong immersion seeing how coffee is grown, produced, processed, and then shipped out to our roasting plants. What that helped to do was not only infuse passion for the product, but it also helped our partners understand what happens in the lives of the farmers and processors and all that we do to support those communities as well. It’s not only about what we buy and give to the farmers; but it’s also about the schools and the support programs in those coffee-farming areas. Participants are also planting seedlings and picking coffee cherries themselves.”
As you might imagine, selection for these regularly scheduled Origin Experience opportunities is highly competitive, and most of the participants come from customer-facing store-level functions. Criteria for participation include overall job performance, demonstrated coffee knowledge, and communication skills. Valerie notes, “The participants have to be able to and want to share the stories from the experience. As much as we would love to send 200,000 partners to these regions, it would not be respectful to the communities or practical for us. We are relying on the partners who go to give their own authentic accounts to other partners throughout the organization.”
In a culture of ritualized storytelling, enriched and immersive experiences provide unique opportunities for reinforcing important messages. In the case of coffee knowledge, Starbucks has also created an intensive training curriculum that produces impassioned subject-matter experts referred to as Coffee Masters and Coffee Ambassadors. Before we get to these masters and ambassadors, let’s look at the motivational importance of creating opportunities for “mastery.”
Considerable research on human motivation suggests that mastery is a key driver of human performance and that extrinsic reward programs can undermine the intrinsic joy of personal growth and development. Daniel Pink, author of the book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, notes, “Rewards can perform a weird sort of behavioral alchemy: They can transform an interesting task into a drudge. They can turn play into work. And by diminishing intrinsic motivation, they send performance, creativity and upstanding behavior toppling like dominoes.” With this context in mind, leaders at Starbucks encourage the pursuit of coffee expertise through a mastery- and social recognition–based approach, not through a monetary or reward solution. The first level of this two-tiered coffee knowledge program is aptly referred to as Coffee Master, with a more advanced level being referred to as Coffee Ambassador.
Carrie Dills, a former Starbucks barista, shares her journey to Coffee Master by noting, “The manager who hired me was a Coffee Master, and when he talked about the product, there was just this love and passion, and he infused it into me. I don’t even work for Starbucks anymore and should have no incentive to talk about coffee, but I get googly-eyed sharing about the way a bean is harvested, the farmers that harvested it, or how Starbucks takes care of those people.” Carrie notes that she has encountered people who are skeptical of the authenticity of her product passion. “People would say, ‘You’re just spewing company rhetoric,’ and I would push back that I feel it, I believe it, and I’ve gone out of my way to see it for myself and interview farmers.” While she was a barista, Carrie reports, she went on a personal vacation in Costa Rica, and “I visited a farm where they harvest Starbucks beans. I told the farmers that I was employed at Starbucks, and they were in awe. I sought out that experience because of involvement with the Coffee Master program and the level of interest it generated in me.”
Opportunities for Coffee Master status are not limited to U.S.-based Starbucks operations or exclusively to those who brew and serve coffee in Starbucks stores. Wang Bin Wolf, a Starbucks partner and supervisor at the Jianwai SOHO branch of Starbucks in Beijing, China, shares that he was not motivated by his prior employment in a printing factory and often felt exhausted and drained after his workday. Wolf reports that his prior negative work experience was in stark contrast to the friendliness and knowledgeability of the baristas he personally had encountered at Starbucks, and that because of this, he made a conscious decision that he would work at Starbucks. Upon his employment, he became involved in the Coffee Master program.
As a result of his participation in the Coffee Master training, Wolf appreciates that “coffee-making is a form of art…. To someone who had never had coffee before Starbucks, it simply tasted bitter to me. During the process, I had to keep on tasting, and learning from others to gain more experience. Gradually, I discovered the complexity of flavors…. Once a stranger, coffee has now become my very good friend…. Through my learning and effort, I continued to improve. Eventually I was able to wear the black apron and carry the title of Coffee Master. Personally, I am very proud and happy.”
Like many partners who do not serve in a customer-facing coffee preparer role, Jenny Cui, business analysis manager, who works in the Starbucks Support Center in Seattle, Washington, shares her journey to Coffee Master: “I grew up with tea, and coffee was not really my thing. When I joined Starbucks, I was swept into information and experiences about coffee-growing regions, different taste profiles, and how to make beverages. It was a totally different world for me, but I enjoyed it. And now, I’m proud that I am certified as a Coffee Master.” Based on her early learning experiences after her arrival at Starbucks, Jenny reports that she decided to sign up and learn more about coffee and how the human connection is forged through coffee: “Through my work to achieve the Coffee Master designation and based on the general culture here, I’m regularly part of groups who taste different blends and talk about coffee. I also attend regular coffee-roasting events to better understand how our coffees are crafted.” When asked why, as a finance professional, she would invest so much time in the pursuit of coffee knowledge, Jenny stated, “It’s just a great feeling to learn about the product that drives our business and to develop a deeper appreciation for the complex characteristics of coffee and the way it comes to market.”
While the Coffee Master designation represents a sufficient growth challenge for many Starbucks partners, the leaders at Starbucks have created an additional level of coffee expertise referred to as a Coffee Ambassador. Andrea Bader, Coffee Ambassador for Starbucks in Switzerland, wears a special brown apron and offers insights on how she achieved her title: “Ten Coffee Masters and our store managers participated in an event judged by the district leadership team for our region in Switzerland. Each of the Coffee Masters had to present two Starbucks coffees and craft perfect food pairings. After being selected to represent my district, I joined the other district representatives in the Coffee Ambassador challenge for Switzerland. This time all store managers from Switzerland and the entire leadership team evaluated our coffee presentations and our food pairings. I am delighted to have been chosen as the Swiss Coffee Ambassador.” When asked if she was being financially rewarded (extrinsically motivated) for achieving this level of expertise, Andrea responded, “I did this to have a greater impact on coffee knowledge in my company. In fact, recently I had this crazy idea to do coffee tastings over Skype and Facebook. Literally, 1,000 people from around the world joined me in the experience. People were asked to prepare a specific blend of coffee, and we used the Skype call to discuss the flavor experiences of the participants.”
Leaders at Starbucks have crafted ways to immerse staff members in enriched learning experiences that create opportunities for product passion. Moreover, they have found ways to spark mastery of product knowledge by relying on an intrinsic sense of accomplishment that comes from advanced learning and the ability to teach others. What immersive opportunities and volunteer training recognition resources should you consider to enhance product passion among your people?
Jim Collins, author of the bestselling business book Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t, asserts that visionary companies are led by individuals who are constantly assessing their company’s strategy and ensuring that it is in “alignment to preserve an organization’s core values, to reinforce its purpose, and to stimulate continued progress towards its aspirations. When you have superb alignment, a visitor could drop into your organization from another planet and infer the vision without having to read it on paper.”
For all their effort to value coffee quality, passion, and knowledge, there was a time in Starbucks history when the strategic decisions of the leaders failed to support product passion. In fact, Starbucks leaders became so focused on driving positive sales numbers (reflected in year-over-year same-store comparables, or “comps”) that coffee excellence was compromised. Howard Schultz readily acknowledges that comps “were a dangerous enemy in the battle to transform the company. We’d had almost 200 straight months of positive comps, unheard-of momentum in retail. And as we grew at a faster and faster clip during 2006 and 2007, maintaining that positive comp growth history drove poor business decisions that veered us away from our core.” Howard goes on demonstrate what he calls the “comp effect” by describing a store visit where he encountered a large pile of stuffed animals for sale: “‘What is this?’ I asked the manager in frustration, pointing to a pile of wide-eyed cuddly toys that had absolutely nothing to do with coffee.” In response, the manager pointed out that the stuffed animals were good for his store’s comps, building incremental sales and high profit margins. This led Howard to conclude that the comp effect had produced a “mentality that had become pervasive. And dangerous.”
In his book Onward, Howard detailed a series of strategic moves that were made at the senior leadership level in an effort to retain the “soul” of Starbucks. A number of these efforts clearly demonstrated the leadership’s passion for coffee and a declaration that Starbucks was “reclaiming its coffee authority.” Some of these coffee-specific strategies included closing all U.S. Starbucks stores for an afternoon to retrain baristas on how to make the perfect espresso shot and espresso-based beverages, the creation and launch of the Pike Place® Roast (a transformative balanced coffee roast that brought the aroma of grinding fresh beans back into Starbucks stores), and the acquisition and thoughtful deployment of the Clover® brewing system (an advanced brewing method that creates a personalized high-quality coffee by drawing water down through finely ground coffee, thus retaining the coffee’s most flavorful oils).
Since the company’s turnaround, leaders have maintained their alignment with the centrality of coffee. This is evidenced by coffee product innovations such as Starbucks® Blonde Roast. For years, Starbucks leaders had been aware that a large number of coffee consumers (approximately 40 percent) rejected dark roast coffee or preferred lighter roasts. Evaluations of coffee-roasting taste profiles consistently had shown that lighter roasts were grassy with a sour green flavor, resulting in significantly lower quality ratings than those for the darker roasts of Starbucks.
Brad Anderson, one of the key coffee roasters responsible for Blonde, shares how the lighter roast emerged after 80 attempts. “We wanted a mild sweetness and the taste of cereal to be flavor notes for Blonde. We didn’t know how to get there with our existing roast styles. So we started from scratch and tweaked things over and over again. For me, it was a technical and personal challenge, and we spent a lot of time developing that coffee. Every time the product came back to us, we asked how we could make it better. I am extremely proud of our final product and the teams of people who stayed so dedicated to its creation.”
REFLECTION ON CONNECTION
1. How do you help your staff fully experience your products or services? What are your parallels to a Starbucks Origin Experience?
2. Are you incorporating mastery and social recognition into your training programs? If so, how?
3. How aligned are your strategies and your stated values concerning product excellence? In the words of author Jim Collins, if “a visitor could drop into your organization from another planet,” would that visitor be able to know your vision for product excellence “without having to read it on paper”?
Partners at the store level appreciate it when product-based strategies and values align. More important, partners experience the positive impact of that alignment on the lives of their customers. Barista Elisha shares, “I like dark coffee, but I think that making Blonde available to customers is wonderful, because many aren’t dark drinkers. Blonde is in keeping with our commitment to product excellence, and it hits a market of new customers. Bringing in those new customers allows us to talk to them about coffee and lets them in on an experience others have enjoyed for years.” When you combine innovative products that add new customer segments with a loyal customer base, you have a recipe for business success and sustainability.
With Starbucks leadership investing a great amount of energy in creating an environment where partners are passionate about coffee, it is important to determine the return on that investment. Do product-impassioned Starbucks partners actually incite product passion on the part of customers?
In this chapter, you’ve seen how fueling a customer’s coffee passion can contribute to an interest in becoming a Starbucks partner. While most customers won’t be moved to the point of seeking employment with Starbucks, many will strengthen their relationship with Starbucks and expand the frequency, depth, and breadth of their purchases. For example, barista Paul Quinn shares how a customer’s purchase patterns changed as he shared his coffee passion with her: “I am in the process of becoming a Coffee Master, and I have found that the process has reinvigorated my whole-bean passion, and has in turn enhanced my ability to sell. Everyone has regulars, and with the knowledge gained … from my Coffee Master Journal, I’ve turned one of my Friday night regulars into somewhat of a coffee buddy.” Paul reports that he and this regular had talked about a variety of Starbucks roasts and appropriate food pairings. As a result, Paul prepared a small coffee press of Guatemala Casi Cielo® and sampled it with a slice of lemon loaf. Paul adds that the customer’s “face lit up as she began to understand exactly what I meant as I explained how the citrus enhances the taste of the coffee…. Now, I see her almost every Friday between 10:30 and 11 p.m., and we have a chat about what’s brewing … or snacks and pastries that go well with certain coffees.” For example, Paul notes that he recommended Gold Coast Blend® with a Snickers bar. As a result of their relationship, Paul notes, “She almost always picks up a pound of coffee…. There is a genuine connection with the customer, which is fantastic, and the Coffee Master program is only helping me become more knowledgeable and a better barista.”
Increased visit frequency, wider product penetration, greater customer engagement, consistent product sell-through, and employee pride and professional development are enviable by-products of igniting the passion of your team members. Will you give your customers a reason to be passionate about your products? What specifically will you do to champion product passion in your business? We know, thanks to mounting research evidence, that “knowledgeable employees” is one of the top items on the wish list for customers today. Imagine what knowledgeable and passionate employees can do, not only for your customers, but for the morale and enthusiasm associated with your business. Starbucks isn’t imagining!
When frontline staff members are passionate about your products, they build interest and excitement on the part of your customers.
Passionate staff members not only sell products, but have a magnetically positive impact when it comes to turning customers into future employees and brand fans.
Research suggests that effective staff growth and development often follows a 70/20/10 approach, with 70 percent of education coming from on-the-job experience and hands-on practice, 20 percent from mentoring and coaching, and 10 percent from a formal curriculum.
Corporate rituals are powerful ways to create a common bond, inspire commitment and innovation, and build an integrated and effective culture.
Authentic corporate rituals also define unique aspects of your culture and reinforce your business’s broader purpose, particularly when those rituals are supported by enriched experiential learning and a congruent business strategy.
Rather than providing messages that solely describe the “what” and “how” of your products, listen for and share stories that will help connect your people to the nuances of your products and/or special aspects of the customer journey.
As Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act but a habit.”
Rewards can transform an interesting task into drudgery and diminish intrinsic motivation. Rather than relying on rewards, consider the power of autonomy, mastery, and purpose.
Evaluate every strategy to ensure that it aligns with your core values, reinforces your purpose, and stimulates continued progress toward your aspirations.
When you combine innovative products that add new customer segments with a loyal customer base, you have a recipe for business success and sustainability.