For anyone that is in the sales and service business you must learn the story of Zane’s Cycles.  I’ve lived in Guilford, CT for more than 20 years and knew Zane’s was a very successful bicycle sales and service business but I never fully understood why or the kind of person and leader Chris Zane is.  I feel as though I missed some extraordinary lessons by not paying closer attention.

Many of us on LinkedIn look for business insight, to apply lesson from thoughtful leaders into our business practices.  I recently wrote about DocuSign and their commitment to client success.  The Zane’s Cycle team has for more that 30 years, had the same unwavering commitment to customer service, loyalty, and making every customer interaction 100% positive.  Here are some examples to share:

Life-time warrantee – Zane’s wants to create lifetime customers and provides several free and low cost programs that insure clients will continue to interact with them as their families grow.  Zane’s know that every time they have a opportunity to interact with their customers they will further develop trust and deliver value.  Think about that, its pretty extraordinary to have the culture to know that every time you and your team interact with clients that something positive will happen.

Zane’s generous approach to servicing clients is based on its faith in people and the belief that clients will do the right thing.  There are many generous elements of the company’s business approach – some when you look quickly you wonder “How could a business afford to do this? – How can they afford to take this risk?”.  But Chris and his team have great confidence in people interacting honestly and honorably.  That is how he interacts with them and how they interact with him.  Another thing to think about – what if we earned that kind of trust/loyalty from our clients?  How much time would we free up to innovate and find ways to deliver more value to clients and partners.

There are several great videos of Chris on his LinkedIn profile – I suggest you invite him to connect on LinkedIn and take the time to view his presentations.  I learned a great deal and you will too.