Losing your customers

Losing Your Customers
By Sinapup

There are lots of ways to get customers to not return. Losing customers, is it a problem? You have to work very hard to chase a customer away. How do you do it?

One way is to ignore to them. Whatever they have to say about you, your company or your service, you don’t hear them. Doesn’t she know that you are busy? You have better things to do than stand about jawing about something. She will just have to wait or come back, when you will have more time.

I heard a while back about a sales associate who told a customer that the store was closing in about ten minutes. When the customer objected and said that he wanted more time, the sales person said, “No, I’ve got to close at 5.” In any case the customer left and from what I heard, he had wanted to make a substantial purchase, in the order of $5000. The sales person wanted to get home to watch the local basketball team play. I’m sorry, but that is not good customer relations and it will never make “raving fans”.

What do you put up with?

What are you putting up with?
By Sinapup

How much energy do you have for living? At the end of your energy, do you still have more day left. We have all noticed how easy it is to get things on our plate. What we are not expecting and what takes up vital energy are the unfinished things in our life. These ignored, unconscious intruders eat up our energies and damage our lives. One of the most serious and most subtle of things is keeping up with what bugs you. Take a moment and consider what it is that you put up with each day. Maybe it’s your car, your neighbors, your spouse, your kids. Maybe it’s your job, or your boss. Maybe it’s the traffic, or whatever. Make a list of all these things that get next to you and eat up your life. You might not have more than a half dozen, but I’m betting that if you really look and think, there are a hundred things you are tolerating. What this will do for you is to make what you are "toleration conscious."

Take this list and put it somewhere you can find it.
Read it once a month.
Awareness + Attention + Intention = miracle

Christian Testimony

I trusted in Jesus Christ as my personal Savior in January 1960. I have followed Him for over 40 years and He has never failed to be all that He promised or to do what He said.

Keeping Your Business

Choose, Lose and Keep Customers

If you are in business you need to have a certain customer base. How do you choose your customers, and what do you do to lose and keep them? There are a number of searching questions you can ask that will help you get real answers to these questions. One, do you know who your customers are? If you run a department store, you are far less likely to know many of your customers individually, but if you are a CPA or an insurance agent, personal relationships are what it is all about. Secondly, Do you know which of your customers are the most valuable? You might need to rank your customer list and find out who uses your services. Not all customers are created equal, yet most businesses treat them the same. Thirdly, you might ask if you have too many customers. How is that possible? I don't think one needs to be rude about it, but if a customer is more of a waste of time than a source of income, dump them. Go after the right customer for you and your business. You will do them more good and yourself too.

Hearing versus Listening

Several years ago in Gresham, Oregon a mall was constructed called Gresham
Station. This is an outdoor mall, where each of the shops looks like a
store by itself. Quite a nice effect, I think. In anycase, one of the stores was
nearing completion. The inside had been finished, the carpeting done and
it was ready to be occupied. One day a young man was observed listening
carefully and intently to the wall from outside the Eddy Bauer Store. As he
was acting somewhat strange many people were curious about what he was
doing. He approached the manager and said, "There's a cat in the wall, I hear a cat." They went outside and listened by getting down on the sidewalk. Soon, they found a way to see the cat, but were unable to get it out. The manager called the construction people and they cut open the wall and freed the cat. One of the employees took the cat home. Can you guess what she named the cat? That's right, she named it Eddy.

Lesson: If we listen carefully, we may hear something no one else can hear
and it might, just might help a great deal.

Living Now

Here is a little poem called “Now”

Look to this day!
For it is life, the very life of life.

For yesterday is but a dream
And tomorrow is only a vision
But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness
And tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore, to this day!
Such is the salutation of dawn.
- -Kalidasa

Do you live in the past, with regrets and bitterness? Or, even to live with the happiest moment of your life, in the past. Perhaps you live in the future, always waiting for the arrival of your ship or your whatever. It is not that we don’t have memories, whether good or bad, or that we don’t have hopes and plans, but rather that we don’t take up residence in the past or the future. Today is the day of our life. To live there is wonderful compared to living in the past or the future. If today is not the happiest day of your life, when will it be. Today is the only day you have, use it wisely and rejoice in it.

On Needs versus Wants

Do you have a hidden resistance to a given course of action or behavior when you say, "I should or I need to do _________," For example, I may say, "I need to go shopping." This could very well be true. It could also mean just that: "I need to go shopping." In this case there is no underlying agenda. However, if I should say, "I need to go shopping," and at the same time say to myself, "I really don't want to go shopping," then the need becomes a way of not doing it. " I need to_____, but I am not going to ______." I don't know how this works out for you, but I frequently find that this is how I am thinking. I want more customers, but I don't want the extra effort it will take to get them. I want more money, but I am not willing to extend the effort necessary to get more money.

You make up your own list. It might just help.

Reserves are essential

Reserve is a margin, kind of like the distance between your car and the one in front of you or behind you. It is a safety factor, but more than that it is a comfort and sense of security. Not absolute security for sure, but a welcome one. A full tank of gas is the same thing. In our personal lives, a reserve is a cushion in an account. To have a reserve is to have some freedom from the demands of circumstances or crisis. Consider these areas and ask about your reserves in each: time, space, money, energy, opportunity, love, information, wisdom, self and integrity. There are clearly other areas where you will want reserve and there are numerous ways to get it. If you worry, it may be that if you work on your reserves you would be more comfortable. I recommend that my business clients get a reserve of up to six months or even a year of business income set aside for a reserve in case of some unpleasant event. Personally, that's not a bad idea for each of us.

Power of A Personal Coach

Once in a while someone has a really great idea, an idea which will impact the lives of a lot of people in a really significant way. That is what has happened since the idea of coaching as a way of improving life and work originated.

So what is a coach? One way of seeing it is as a partnership between the coach and the client which results in a focus on the client’s agenda, plans, direction and developing action steps reaching these goals. Usually people have no difficulty with the idea of a coach when you talk about it in terms of athletics. Only slight difficulty occurs when you think of a piano coach, a dance coach, a drama coach. Moving farther in this direction to the business coach or the success coach requires a bit more of a shift. Many people who hire a coach, are already doing well and want a coach to help them do better. Many professional musicians hire a coach in order to improve the quality of their performance. Sometimes it is the development of grace to compliment knowledgeable performance. A coach can help you be your best.
Hiring a coach is an important step in the development of personal and performance excellence

Personal Power

The topic today is "power", personal power. Power enables you to act, to maintain your integrity and honest, and to enforce your standards. You might be asking "What is the source of my power?" "Is it derived from within or from without?" Power is not something you use to control others except to limit their crossing your boundaries. It is not something you use, although you can, to get people to do what you want. It is, in main, the ability to stay in control of your self. It serves to give you confidence and self-assurance, as well as enabling you to do what it is that you want. For the Christian, the source of power is Christ, resulting in self-discipline and performance.

Power also can be in several forms, but what we are discussing here is personal power. It is the ability to influence, impact but not demean others. It is the ability to be fully human and fully humble, without loss of self-appreciation.

As you can see, this could go on, but you think about it and about how you are empowered.