All You Need Is Love

~In memory of John Lennon and my Mother and Father, who taught me to Love

I suggest that before you can truly succeed, you must love: It’s the greatest power.

How do people want to be treated? With love, of course.

Robert Frost said, “Love is the irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.”

John Lennon said, “We’ve got this gift of love, but love is like a precious plant. You can’t just accept it and leave it in the cupboard or just think it’s going to get on by itself. You’ve got to keep watering it. You’ve got to really look after it and water it.”

In other words, how better to create, nurture and sustain relationships than through love.

There are, however, few four letter words in the English language that are more ill-used or beg for definition than the word “love.”

In the mouth and mind of Jesus, the word love means “an act of unselfish regard for the other,” or an act “that wills another’s good.”

Both the philosopher Aristotle and the theologian St. Thomas Aquinas called that kind of love “benevolentia,” from which we have our word “benevolence.”

And the theologian/philosopher Joseph Fletcher defined love as “good will at work in partnership with reason.”

Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin, author of “Being God’s Partner: How to Find the Hidden Link between Spirituality and Your Work”, tells a story about the boss of the moving crew that moved his family from Pennsylvania to New York:

“It’s like this, Rabbi: Moving is hard for most people. It’s a very vulnerable time for them. People are nervous about going to a new community, and about having strangers pack their most precious possessions. I think God wants me to treat my customers with love and make them feel that I care about their things and their life. God wants me to help make their changes go smoothly. If I can be happy about it, maybe they can be, too.”

People want to be treated with love.

Let love be the sum and total of all the little things we do, from the way we answer the phone to the way we write a letter (If you are still writing letters!) or write an email, from the way we make a presentation to the way we fulfill an order, from the way we act on Twitter or on Facebook.

Let love be a way of doing business--of LIVING; not a one-time event, but a process of creating a customer environment of information, assurance, comfort and credibility.

Let love be your strategic weapon and it will help to differentiate you and your company in the marketplace.

I believe businesses have never faced a brighter horizon than what is ahead tomorrow. The opportunity for companies that can discern and satisfy the desires of tomorrow’s customers is enormous.

All you need is love.

Swans on The Lower Mill Pond. Easthampton, Massachusetts. Photo by Bruce Barone.