Making Business & Customers For Life

There is nothing more important in business than Making Business.   For that reason, every employee of the company is in Sales, whether they know it or not because every interaction with a client or customer is a selling process.  Clients and Customers need constant validation that they made the right decision when they chose a particular company, service or product.   As such, the sale really begins after the contract is signed, with service implementation. 

At a time of high unemployment, it is really critical that all employees understand that the goal is Customers For Life and that their jobs really do depend on it.   In essence, clients and customers are making our mortgage and rent payments, since in many instances about 70% of company revenues go to pay total employee compensation and benefits.  
So when an employee provides great service and or says thank you to a client or customer,  it should be done with a recognition that the client or customer is providing our income and life style.   The relationship is direct.    The employer is just a pass through entity in this process. 

And, even though it may sometimes involve hard work and more stress, it is the most demanding clients and customers that push organizations, often guilty of inertia, to continuously improve processes and practices.   These clients and customers do us a big favor when they make demands that may seem unreasonable; but could be the basis for innovation.  

Services should be built from the client and customer back, not from operations, or internal administration out.   We, who work in service companies, should adjust to client demand, not the other way around.   Companies should never allow "the way we always do it" to be the dominant force behind business decisions.   All to often, we hear all the reasons we can't do something, rather than all the reasons we can do something from many employees in a company.   That attitude is a road to client losses. 

The fact is that as long as practices are legal and ethical, there is nothing companies can't do to satisfy the needs of clients and customers.   This does not mean maintaining unprofitable clients, or sloppy management, or ever losing control of the back office; but it may mean a willingness to consider alternatives.   Making business is everyone's job at every company.   Maintaining profitable Clients and Customers for Life is the critical imperative in this process.      

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