Listening to Your Customers
Even in slow economic times, a business can grow by paying attention to the customers. Listening to your profitable customers and adapting your business to them now, may do more to sustain a business than any mass market appeal. Besides, the masses are not all your ideal customers anyway.
Some people right now need or want your business's product or service, so tell the truth, explain what you will and won't do and realize that some will go away.
This week, ask your customers how you can better serve them. What makes them smile?, What will make their buiness life easier?
Time spent now, will be remembered in the future when customers have more to spend!
Copyright 2009 Linda Fayerweather
What's working in your Business?
Changing Lanes LLC
http://www.changinglanes.biz/
Giving to Give
A novel idea for the commercialized world we live in and do business, when every Season's Greetings or Birthday card contains a coupon for a percentage off an order of $20, 50, 100 or more. (It seems we increasingly have to spend just to qualify for discounts that make the deal a perceived value.) So what does Giving to Give mean?
It means get rid of your agenda. Send a Birthday card to your best customer - without your logo on the card - and say . . . wait for it . . . "Happy Birthday! We're glad that we have had the opportunity to be of service to you in the past year and we sure hope it's been a good year for you!"
It means saying what you think you can't. Send your biggest client a Season's Greeting card and tell them "We respect you and value your input over the last year". I guarantee it will go miles beyond the smarmy "Wishing you and yours a . . . fill in the blank".
It's easy if you turn the tables on yourself. You probably have received a card or a gift from a supplier, or maybe your dentist, or even your mechanic, and it was probably branded with their logo and how much they can save you on your next purchase or service, etc. If you can relate to this then I'll bet you a dollar to a donut that you said something like "Yeesh. Why can't they treat me like person instead of a dollar sign!"
When we treat our customers, clients, family and friends like we'd like to be treated, we get amazing results. Practice the Golden Rule in your appreciation and it will show through. If you Give to Get, or give to get something in return, then that will show through too! If you'd rather have your card or gift recipients say "Wow! That was special!" and go on to tell all their friends and family, then let go of the outcome and send them something from the heart.
"For it is in giving that we receive." - St. Francis of Assisi
Copyright 2009 Todd Pillars is an Appreciation Marketer with Send Out Cards.
Contact him today at 419-855-2273, tpillars@gmail.com or visit his website at http://www.sendoutcards.com/tpillars
Links of Interest
A Free Copy of Think And Grow Rich! The Best-Selling Success Book of All Time by Napoleon Hill. http://www.FreeTGRbook.com/ChangingLanes Vic Johnson, wants to give you a free copy. It is one of my personal favorites and one I give to college graduates. Take the opportunity to get one for free!
