Several times in the last week I’ve had to explain the concept of one’s “cost to do business with”.

I became aware of the idea when I read an article by Tim Sanders, he introduced it in his book Love Is the Killer App. I’ve written and taught about it frequently. It’s worth repeating.

Here’s the idea. Everyone makes a contribution to an enterprise. You use your time, talent, energy – any of your resources you choose – to add to the collective value of the efforts of the team.

On the other side of the ledger, there is a cost associated with your contribution. You get paid. You’re allocated resources.

The costs also include “emotional wear and tear.” Put simply: some people are easy to do business with. Teammates enjoy the interaction. They feel helped. They are glad to see you coming. In fact, you can be such a good teammate, instead of it being a cost, it can be asset.

But, some people have an edge. They can be testy, moody and/or dramatic. Conflicts are frequent. Criticism occurs. To get to the contribution, you have to endure the cost of doing business with them.

So, no one’s perfect.

The goal is to have your contribution well outweigh your cost.

One of the things I love about our company is the frequency in which customers, vendors and community members tell me how much they appreciate interacting with our teammates. It seems being focused on having our contributions outweigh our costs accrues to our benefit.

Customers choose us because of it.

Vendors favor us because of it.

Good people join us because of it.

Having our value exceed our cost both tangibly and intangibly is good practice. Thanks for all you do to increase our value.