You are not in the service business

You are not in the service business, you are in the relationship business. And when you think about it this way you act differently. Here are some examples:

If you are in the Service Business you might ask “How can I help you?”, if you are in the Relationship Business you might ask, “How are you [...]

I lied

A while back I wrote a post titled “Never offer a discount.” I even wrote a second post on the subject of offering discounts which you can read here. Both posts discuss the reasons that you should never offer a discount. In a nutshell, you should provide value and keep your prices firm. Don’t cheapen [...]

Its not the size of the logo that counts

The title of this post really says it all. Don’t make your logo too big. I see it over and over, almost like a company feels that it won’t get noticed if their logo is too small.
The companies that pay boatloads of money to manage their brand and logo don’t use large logos, so why [...]

Marketing Key #12 of 13

Marketing Key #12 – Your customer is buying a promise.
Remember, your customers are buying a promise from you. Especially your new customers.
Your returning customers have their past experiences with you so assuming they were positive, these customers have a reasonable expectation that you will deliver your service as promised. But new customers have to rely [...]

10 things you should never have on your website

Last week while surfing the Internet I came across a surprising number of shockingly bad websites. Which got me thinking about some things that should absolutely never be on a website. Below are 10 things that immediately came to mind, some of which I actually saw. Please feel free to add to the list in [...]

Marketing Key #7 of 13

Marketing Key #7 – Be a resource to your customers.
You absolutely have to be more than just the person/company your customer calls when they need to purchase your service. Do whatever it takes to be the industry expert in your customers eyes.
1. Send them the occasional email with a link to an article that [...]

People buy people

Its important to remember that when customers or companies buy a service, they are really buying the person selling the service. Do your customers want to buy you? Do you have people within your company that customers want to buy?
Your service is doomed to fail if you don’t have “buyable” people selling it.

Know your touch points

Every time, every place, every moment a customer interacts with your company, you have a touch point. A touch point can be any number of things, including:

visiting your website
receiving and paying an invoice
interacting with your customer service
one of your employees at a job fair
your listing in a local directory
a review of your service on [...]

You will be judged by your email address

I got a letter in the mail the other day from a company that claims to have the ability to lower my property tax. Interesting service if its true. The letter was fairly well written and had a real signature at the bottom. Nice touch.
But here was the problem. As formal and professional as the [...]

Nice is not a substitute for good

I had to rent a car the other day and experienced a common dilemma that many of us face when purchasing a service. The employee that is VERY nice but not very good. But what do you do in a situation like this?
I found myself at the car rental place for over 30 minutes…and I [...]