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One Way to Turn a Contact Into a Relationship

Many people in business attend networking events so they can make new "contacts" for their business. The problem is, too many people are just out to spread as many of their business cards around as they can and hope for the best.

You also have "contacts" among your customers. Now that you've made the sale, you really don't have much of a relationship with this new customer -- yet. So what can you do to turn a contact into a relationship? Make your next contact PERSONAL. What I mean by that is, do a small personal favor or give a small personal gift. 

In his book, The Little Black Book of Connections, Jeffrey GItomer talks about how effective this has been for him. He is in the habit of giving customers who have small children, books for them to read to their kids (or grand kids). Gitomer talks about the emotional impact he creates by giving these books. Once you "touch" someone in this way, your relationship with them deepens.

Another example he offers in his book is instead of taking a customer to lunch or playing a round of golf, take them to a driving range to hit a bucket of balls. Then hire a golf pro to come in and give your customer a lesson.

In these examples, he's creating a memorable event for the customer that he or she will remember for a long time. This can go a long way towards strengthening your relationship with that customer or "contact".

What have YOU done to turn a contact into a relationship? Post your thoughts by clicking on the Comments link below.

Do You Provide Customer Service or Customer Satisfaction?

A wise building service contractor once suggested to members of The Janitorial Store that we are NOT in the customer service business. Rather, we are in the customer SATISFACTION business. He explained that service is a concept; satisfaction is a demonstration.

Have you ever lost business and wondered why?

"The building was clean" we say, and it probably was. But somewhere along the line we irritated the customer. It may have been something one of our employees said like "that's not in the contract". Sure, your company was providing the service but the customer wasn't satisfied with your organization.

Years ago Tom Peters once said, "If you have to have someone in customer service what are the rest of your people doing"? Think about that the next time you go to Walmart or Target. They have a separate "customer service" department. You may even have a "customer service representative" who travels around visiting customers to see "how we're doing". If that's the case, what are the rest of your people doing to provide customer satisfaction?

Be a Magnetic Employer: How to Attract and Keep Employees

The following article by Jean Hanson, Co-Founder of TheJanitorialStore.com and MyHouseCleaningBiz.com, appeared in the June issue of Services Magazine, the official magazine for the building service contracting industry and the BSCAI.

Be a Magnetic Employer: How to Attract and Keep Employees

As cleaning business owners and managers, we want to attract dependable, productive and motivated employees. But too often we waste time, money and energy hiring a “warm body” instead of figuring
out how to use our own company’s magnetism to attract the right people.

To do that, we need to ask ourselves what makes us magnetic as employers and as individuals. With that information, we can market those attributes when recruiting new employees.

Are You Magnetic?
The easiest way to find out if your organization is “magnetic” is to answer the following questions...

Read the rest of the article here (scroll down to page 30):
http://www.servicesmag.org/pdfs/issues/Svcs_June09_LR.pdf

What makes YOU a magnetic employer? Post your thoughts by clicking on the Comments link below.