Treat them right and
they keep coming back.
It has taken me many years to
learn a simple lesson. There are very few things in
life that we are able to directly change. We cannot
change our colleagues, the Government, the weather
or our customers. We cannot change our spouses or
our children. If we wish to influence any of those
things we must begin by changing ourselves.
If you work in any organisation there are
probably co-workers who you do not get long with as
well as you might. No doubt they annoy and irritate
you. But have you stopped to consider what might
happen if you treated them differently? Would they
react to you differently and become less annoying
and nicer people? Perhaps it is worth a try, maybe
they react towards you in the manner they do because
of the way you behave towards them.
Often it is easy to blame someone else for a
situation when we are equally to blame ourselves.
Even if a situation is not our "fault" it is still
probably worth changing our own behaviour towards
someone else if that will produce an effect that we
want. Even if the change just leaves us feeling
better within ourselves knowing that we have done
whatever we were able to do to improve things.
How do you treat your customers? When was the
last time that you sent them a simple note to say
“Thank you for your custom and support”, have you
ever sent such a note? How would you feel towards a
supplier who sent you such a letter?
When was the last time you asked your customers
if there was anything that you could do for them? I
do not mean as a veiled message, which really means
“is there anything else we can sell you.” Simply and
genuinely ask if there is anything you can do for
them without expecting anything in return.
Will some people take advantage? Probably but I
am afraid that is just life. Those people were
always going to take advantage in some way. What is
important is the goodwill you generate among the
majority of your customers. If your customers feel
that you care about them they are far less likely to
change supplier and will probably purchase more from
you. It will always be cheaper to keep existing
customers than to find new ones.
Why not just try the idea out with a few of your
best customers and see what happens?
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