A Letter from Chris Suarez
ARE YOUR STANDARDS JUST STANDARD?
For a couple months I have been looking at a statement each week that I wrote in my notebook. I don’t remember when I wrote it, or why I wrote it. It’s just a simple question at the top of a single page. I never added anything to it. I never wrote about it. I never brought it up on a call. Just a simple question at the top of a blank piece of paper:
“Are your standards just standard?”
The word standard as a noun is often used to connote a certain level of quality or a way to measure or evaluate something. As an adjective it is mostly used to describe something that has become normal, even average.
In sales, we usually look at this word as a minimum expectation of ourselves or even those around us. We set “standards” for activities we must hit in order to be on the path to success or to achieve a certain result. We set “standards” for our service level - whether that be response time, level of follow up, or client care. We have standards for when we show up and how we show up.
In our lives, we have written or unwritten standards. We have standards for how we want to be treated. We have standards for our children to meet.
If we are dating, I hope we have standards.
But the world has changed. And put simply and bluntly, standards have slipped. Dress and grooming standards, level of commitment standards, work ethic standards, personal respect standards. Standards have been steadily retreating. So have your standards become standard? If so, we may be slipping without even noticing we are moving.
As I think about our sales teams across the country at this very moment, if our standards were just standard, we have all signed up to go backwards. The economy has slipped, the market has slipped, the total addressable market has slipped. What was standard in 2020 or 2021 or even 2022 just won’t work in 2023. If we are not ready to redefine our standard, we must be ready to retreat.
I have followed Tobi Lutke for some time. I bought a snowboard from Snowdevil, the online store he launched back in 2004. Soon thereafter he turned that single store into Shopify - a platform to sell snowboards and pretty much anything else you can imagine. Today over 1.8 million different businesses in over 175 different countries run-on the Shopify platform. He built it into a $82b company before its recent stock price pull-back in this not too standard market. He has created one of the greatest companies in the world, by always making sure he wasn’t standard.
Recently in an interview Tobi shared that if a company will agree to anything, accept everything, and hire anyone, the organization will eventually demonstrate a bell curve. All bell curves will lead to an average. And in performance and purpose, average is death.
Companies who set no real standards about who they want to get into business with or who they choose to stay in business with, will absolutely demonstrate a bell curve. And all bell curves lead to average.
The interview caused me to turn to the blank page in my notebook with those words:
“Are your standards just standard?”
The timing couldn’t be better to reevaluate every standard in every company that I am part of. Timing couldn’t be better to relook at every standard I have for myself and those around me.
Avoid the bell curve. Timing couldn’t be better to recommit to standards that are anything but standard.
Chris