• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Web and Graphics Designer
Branding and Marketing Expert
Top Leader, Sales Trainer, Coach, Consultant
Motivational Speaker, Best-Selling Author
CopsWives, Wonderful Widowed Women
Co-Founder Gratitude Girls
Founder Nashville Networking Business Luncheon

  • Home
  • About
    • Accomplishments
  • Blog
  • Testimonials
  • Coaching
    • Tools
    • Courses
  • Speaking
  • Videos
  • Books
    • Books I Recommend
  • Media
  • Cards
  • Join
  • Loves & Links

appreciate

How do you feel when you are constantly being sold to?

We all know it’s super annoying!

Mary Kay beauty consultant Kristen Culver feels the same way. She implemented Relationship Marketing in her skin care business seven years ago. Now when she reaches out to her customers to make an order, they aren’t feeling like they are getting sold to.

Kristen says, “I specifically reach out to my customers 3-4 times a year, and it’s not to sell to them” she also says, “If you take care of your customers and appreciate them, then your business will take care of you.”

This week’s feature article, Kristen will explain how she takes time to reach out in kindness to build personal relationship’s with her team & customers. By doing this, her clients and team members don’t feel like just another number in the system.

Her inspiring story of appreciation will prompt you to become more thoughtful in your daily communications in your business and personal relationships.

Watch it here

Why gratitude is good for business, year round

Instead of showing appreciation exclusively during the holidays, some businesses are building it into their day-to-day and reaping business benefits on account of it.

When Kristina Bouweiri started hosting customer appreciation lunches in 2009, she thought she was just helping a friend boost her lagging business.

Little did she know that the lunches, which have been held in posh restaurants around Washington, D.C. like The Palm and Capital Grille, would introduce her to almost 900 of her clients, giving her own business a jolt.

Bouweiri’s unexpected success is testament to the power of appreciation and gratitude in business.

“Instead of going after new business, we decided to go back to old clients and thank them, and develop relationships,” she says. For almost 20 years, her company Reston Limousine had done little or nothing to thank its almost 20,000 clients. Now, says Bouweiri, “I consider it the most important initiative that I have.”

As opposed to showing appreciation one day a year — at Thanksgiving or New Year’s or in an annual customer appreciation sale — some businesses are building it into their daily and weekly plans and policies. And they are seeing the benefits to this approach: Workers are often more engaged when they feel appreciated and customers are more likely to come back and give referrals.

“Gratitude motivates positive reciprocal behavior,” says Randy Raggio, a marketing professor at the University of Richmond. If a customer believes that a business has his best interests at heart, that customer is more inclined to develop a long-term relationship with the business.

Raggio first grew interested in gratitude in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, when the state of Louisiana ran a thank-you-for donations campaign. Many people who saw the campaign were more likely to donate or volunteer in the future, according to his research, even those who had not previously participated in that particular campaign.

A business might show their appreciation by having private sales for their best customers, by offering a few chocolates with the bill, or simply by saying thanks for your business. It needs to be genuine and it’s better if it’s not open to all.

Customer appreciation, Raggio says, usually comes in the form referring a friend, writing a positive review online, or perhaps a willingness to pay more later on.

For years, Susan Whitcomb says she has made good use of gratitude at her Fresno, Calif.-based leadership coaching business, The Academies. This year, she decided she would write a list of “10 things I’m grateful about you” for each of her four staffers, which she says she’ll give to them just before Thanksgiving. One of the notes acknowledges a colleague’s “courage to stretch,” learn to make sales calls, manage others, and her “commitment to make me look good.”

While she admits that she cannot quantify how that has helped her businesses, Whitcomb says she knows it has helped during the recession’s slowest months.

Gratitude is an effective tool largely because “it is a precursor to develop trust,” says Betsy Bugg Holloway, a marketing professor at Samford University in Birmingham, Al. And trust itself is an extremely powerful driver for loyalty, no matter the type of relationship. Just the same, gratitude is only valuable when it comes across as genuine.

“It’s not meant to be any magical formula for wealth,” says John Kralik, author of A Simple Act of Gratitude. He started writing notes in 2008, as his life and law firm were both suffering. His firm was losing money and had lost its office lease. “I was very embarrassed that I couldn’t provide the Christmas bonuses that I had always provided to my employees,” he recalls.

So he wrote appreciation notes to his staff, and sent similar notes to clients who paid their bills on time. He wrote to his children, his friends, and to lawyers who sent a client his way. Kralik says one of the lawyers wrote back to him, saying that he had no idea Kralik would want a client like that. “If you like one, I have 10 more,” the lawyer wrote.

He sees the link between the thank-you notes and his business thriving again. “As you take care of the paying clients, they pay even faster. They value you,” he says. One client’s timely check allowed his firm to relocate and pay the new rent. Others brought him more business. “When you’re feeling especially crummy, it’s a good time to sit down and write about 10 thank-you notes,” Kralik says.

Heidi Kallett had been sending out thank-you notes, but she was looking for another way to keep her stationery and gifts stores, The Dandelion Patch, going. So she and her friend, the limousine company owner, came up with what they thought would be a one-time client appreciation lunch, and invited administrative assistants at the companies that used the limousine company.

The lunches work especially well because assistants are hardly invited to special meals but often watch their bosses head off to a fancy business lunch.

“We don’t sell anything. It’s very low key. We just stand up and introduce ourselves for two minutes,” says Kallett. Then they give away door prizes and swag bags.

Bouweiri came up with a dozen other local business owners who also would be interested in meeting her clients; these partners and others now sponsor the event – and serve as “ambassadors” for the limo company in their circles.

The appreciation lunches have paid off: Last year, revenues at the company increased by 27%, mostly as a result, she says, of the client appreciation lunches, which are held about 10 times a year. Even when she raised rates 10% and added a fuel surcharge in September 2009, “customers were not batting an eyelash. We’ve created long-term lasting relationships,” she says.

“I came up with this idea because I was trying to help Heidi — and I ended up helping myself.”

Shhhh! I know the secret recipe for converting business contacts & casual customers into loyal clients

Has This Ever Happened To You????

Scene #1:
You meet someone at a business luncheon (or by chance in a long line at the hardware store). After a brief discussion, your new acquaintance suggests that he might swing a little business your way. You exchange business cards. Will your new business contact become your new customer?

Scene #2:
Not all customers (or clients) are created equal. Some are (how shall I put this politely) just customers. They drift in, then drift out of your life. However, a smaller percentage of customers power your business forward. Perhaps they are regulars or they refer their friends. Sometimes they are just good folks and they always brighten your day. Will they remain your clients, customers or patients?

In scene #1, rather than rely on chance, why not make certain that you convert your new business contact into a new client?
In scene #2, why not make sure that those special customers know how much you appreciate their business, in a way they will remember?

Success in both of these scenarios is simple to achieve and the costs are negligible compared to the returns.
Is this a new or revolutionary business system?
Hardly. In fact, it is more than 600 years old, yet, remains the world’s favorite form of written communication.

However, today’s technology has changed the playing field. What took hours of effort a year ago, takes little more than a few clicks of your computer mouse, today.
(And yes, if you have an Internet connection, your current computer and software will do the job just fine.)

This works ~ beyond your expectations.

Ask me how, or visit my site at www.ILoveCards.net for more information on how to keep in touch with your clients.

Let’s imagine, for a moment, that greeting cards will help your business grow and increase your income

Let’s imagine, for a moment, that greeting cards will help your business grow and increase your income in every way that we have outlined.

This means that greeting cards are the ultimate business tools in three critical areas:

1. Converting new business contacts into active clients (customers, patients, etc.)

2. Transforming casual customers into loyal clients.

3. Making sure that your best clients remain your best clients.

Hurray for greeting cards!!! What could be better?

How about this concept? Any photo on your computer can be uploaded in about 20 seconds. The greeting card company prints the image inside the card, in bright vibrant color, next to your message.

If you want fanatically loyal clients, and multiple referrals, picture these possibilities:

Scene #1: You take a digital photo of your clients standing in front of their new house. You ask them “Why don’t we send this picture to 10 of your closest friends?”

Scene #2: You take a digital photo of your customers standing in front of their new car, or their new boat or their new recreational vehicle. You ask them “Would you like me to send this picture to a few members of your family?”

Here is the really fun part
-check back with your clients in about 10 days.

This is what you will discover:

* Most of their friends and family have called to offer their congratulations.
* Your clients are overflowing with enthusiasm about a simple photograph that you sent to their friends and family in a greeting card.
* They think you are the greatest. (Consider the future referrals.)
* You, in turn, contact your clients’ friends and relatives (who are now turbo-charged referrals.)

Could anything be more simple and effective?
Not really.

The potential is limited only by your imagination:

* A picture of you shaking hands with your clients, printed inside your personal “thank you” card that says, “I appreciate your business.”
* A picture of you and a new business contact at a luncheon or business event, printed inside your personal “I’m glad I met you card.
* A picture of your son or daughter playing a sport or a musical instrument.(Just for the fun of it.)
* A picture of your vacation in Maui, uploaded from the hotel computer (in Maui) “Wish you were here.”

Armed only with an inexpensive digital camera, a shrewd businessperson could double his or her bottom line, if they utilized greeting cards correctly.

Is this merely hyperbole?
To the contrary, this is not only possible, it is being accomplished all across the country as you read this.

This works – way beyond your expectations.

Primary Sidebar

Sign up to receive a FREE assessment on your business! Plus email ideas, motivation and updates to hear what's going on with me, what I am doing, and things to help you in your business and personal life! Plus a FREE digital copy of my best selling book Keep those Clients

First Name: Last Name:
EMail Address:


Security Code:

I am at the 5k friend limit on FB, and 15k limit on LI, Click below to follow me and make sure to fill out my form to hear from me about ideas on building your business , life and ministry! My passion is to help you on your journey to achieving your goals and living your BEST life possible. Click the buttons below and please say hello!

29432
fb-share-icon
24960
Follow Me
Tweet
20017
24954
Snapchat
Soundcloud
32917
Share
SOCIALICON
SOCIALICON
SOCIALICON
SOCIALICON

Amazon Best-Selling Author

Keep Those Clients

We All Have Choices

Download our FREE APP to keep in touch better with customers and clients
Click Here For Send Out Cards

Categories

  • Build Your Business
  • Business
  • Fashion
  • Gratitude
  • Greeting Cards
  • Health
  • Hotel Reviews
  • Humor
  • Keeping In Touch
  • Laurie's Lessons
  • Laurie's Loves
  • Lifestyle
  • Lose weight
  • Motivation
  • Networking
  • One On Ones
  • Personal Development
  • Recipes
  • Relationship Marketing
  • renovation
  • Restaurant Reviews
  • Success
  • Super Patch
  • Trim Healthy Mama
  • Uncategorized
  • Voxx
  • Widow

Recent Posts

  • Cody Crowley boxer
  • Procrastination, tasks, scattered brain, concentrate, overwhelmed
  • Testimonial from Sally – #LegPain #AnklePain
  • Testimonial from Sharron – #SwollenLeg #LegPain
  • Texas Roadhouse – Spring Hill, TN

Tags

anniversary appreciate birthday brilliance business christmas client clients customer customers dinner dress friends God grateful gratitude greeting card greeting cards grief happy health healthy holiday husband keep in touch life love marketing marriage networking referral referrals relationship restaurant review reviews royal caribbean sales ship success thankful thank you Venus widow wife
© 1999-2021 Laurie Delk Radecki - BMD Enterprises