Here are five ways to impress the heck out of your customers and potential customers, and people you bump into from day to day, and friends and family and pretty much everybody else.
After all, it’s all about relationships and relationships take time, effort and work. And what people tend to want are basically the same things.
1. Give them what they really want/need
You have to take the time to get to know your customers to form the relationship. Once that’s done, you’ll have a much better picture of their wants and needs and you can offer solutions that suit you both. After all, you want to be getting something out of this too, right?
So don’t just try to sell someone on what you want to provide. But, if you can offer a better solution to what they ask for – offer it. If you can’t do what they want, offer to find them someone who can. You may think you risk losing a client, but instead you may gain an advocate. And an advocate is the most valuable asset you can have whether personally or professionally.
2. Value them
Value their time, their work, their recommendations, their ideas. If you’re always running late for meetings, calls or projects you give the impression that you don’t think their time is as important as yours. When you continually put their projects to the bottom of your to do list – they’ll notice your lack of responsiveness. If you don’t care about their recommendations, you’ll probably find they don’t care to recommend you and if they do, it’s not the sort of recommendation you want. And, if you don’t listen to their ideas you’ll could miss out on something that could be the most brilliant thing you could ever imagine. Of course, you might just miss out on a heap of waffle – but you need to be sure which one you’re hearing before cutting someone off.
3. Walk the walk
Remember, you’re asking this person to give you something for a reason – so make sure that you live up to your hype. If you’re offering a professional service, be professional. Remember, being professional has nothing to do with wearing a business suit, dressing the part or saying the right words. It’s all about backing yourself and doing what you say you will. Turn up, be engaged and come through. My all time favorite quotation (from Ralph Waldo Emerson) is: What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say. So if you’re going to talk the talk you have to make sure you’re also walking the walk. There is no easier way to impress the heck out of your customers than by being who they expect you to be.
4. Let you shine through
You’ve got a selling point, right? There’s something that makes you different from everybody else, isn’t there? Let it out, celebrate your uniqueness and allow your customers to see the human face of your business. We all like to have dealings with people we like, so by allowing customers to see the human face of your company, you give them the opportunity to like you. Make it part of your brand. It’s the same thing for non-professional relationships, it’s peoples quirks that makes us love them.
Of course you may risk people not liking you, but is that really important? Wouldn’t you rather your customers be people you like and enjoy a good relationship with?
5. Enjoy
Have a passion for what you do and have a sense of humor about it. Very few people are lucky enough to have a life free from disappointment, boredom or problems – but don’t let them control you. Find the fun in what you do each day and give yourself rewards when you get the yucky stuff done or when you finish a big project.
If you really love what you do, it shines through and people want to associate with people who inspire them. Besides, if you enjoy what you do, it’s heaps easier to put in the effort. You want to go to work each day, you want to keep learning about your field and you want to talk to people about what you do.
If you’d like some more ideas on how to impress the heck out of your customers, check out my previous customer service posts
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