Are you Valuable or Valued?

Apr 9, 2013 | Sales, Marketing & Customer Service, WBS

We've heard over and over "Add value for your customers!" But what does that mean? According to Webster's Dictionary, VALUE means "Monetary or material worth". Therefore, "Add value for your customers" must mean we have to add some thing (product, service, or other benefit) that adds tangible monetary or material gain for our customers. How do we do that? We need to find out what is valuable - and not merely valued - by our customers. There's a big difference between providing something that...

Go Where Your Customers Are Going To Be

Feb 21, 2013 | Sales, Marketing & Customer Service

When asked what helped him become the great hockey player he was, Wayne Gretzky infamously replied, “I go where the puck is going to be.” Because of that simple philosophy, he would be at the right place at the right time; he’d get the puck and score. When he retired in 1999, Gretzky had scored 2857 career points. Not bad for just anticipating where the action is going to be. That same practice is crucial for us in business. We've got to constantly ask ourselves, “Where are our...

Service Your Customers – Turn Them Away

Feb 21, 2013 | Sales, Marketing & Customer Service

I experienced some of the best customer service you can receive yesterday. I was turned away. I had met with a web site designer to talk about redesigning and upgrading my websites. We discussed the shopping cart and site hosting services I currently use and need. We compared them to what his company offered, and he simply said, “Stick with what you've got. You've got a good system in place. We can’t improve on it.” He didn't belittle my current providers or try to sway me into signing up with...

Can You Provide Extraordinary Service?

Oct 30, 2012 | Sales, Marketing & Customer Service

What do you think of when you hear "Extraordinary Customer Service?" For most business owners or managers, when we hear those three words we immediately think of costly endeavors to win over or win back customers. We envision things such as large-scale construction projects to make our sales floors more "customer friendly," intensive staff training on "Building Customer Relationships," or intricately-designed customer loyalty programs to get our customers to buy repeatedly from us. Given these...