Selling the Invisible: a field Guide to Modern Marketing \(Biz Books to Go\) pdfdrive com

To manage satisfaction, you must carefully manage your customer’s
expectations.
Your Patrons Are Saints
She has come to you.

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She has paid for expensive entrées, your favorite CDs, and part of your kids’
upcoming college tuitions.
She has tolerated your mistakes (more than you know).
She has risked her money, her reputation, her peace of mind, and most of her
neck. She may even have risked her entire business.
She has smiled through the worst, laughed through the best, and said nice
things about you to other people.
And so now you ask, should I call her?
Should I feel any debt?
Should I care about her?
Should I bother to tell her? And if I do tell her, how often should I tell her?
There is no such thing as too often, too grateful, too warm, or too
appreciative.
After all she has been through—m o re than you know—you cannot thank
your client too much.
And you probably are not doing it enough.
Your parents were right. S ay thank you. Often.
Thanks
We tell someone we cannot thank them enough.
We’re right; we can’t.
Keep thanking.
Few things feel more gratifying than gratitude— and few services express
their gratitude as much as they should.
How many notes of thanks did you send last year? A suggestion: Send twice
as many this year.
Keep thanking.
Where Have You Gone, Emily Post?
We all get too little thanks, and we yearn for more. The rarer thanks become—
and they do seem rarer— the more we value the thanks we get.
A huge national charity asks a working mother to canvas her block to raise
funds. Carrying her six-month-old son as she walks, she raises $160— 60
percent more than last year’s captain. In return for those three evenings and her

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own $30 contribution, she never hears from the charity again.
Three weeks later a professional association invites a man to keynote its one-
day seminar. He says he can make it only by cutting one day short a vacation to
visit his mother and sister. The association begs, and the speaker relents.
Returning from his West Coast vacation, the speaker gets stranded in Denver.
He arrives in Minneapolis just in time to fuzzbust his way to the conference. He
catches his breath and delivers his speech. The audience responds very
enthusiastically. The seminar hosts barely respond. They mail a four-sentence
form letter to all thirteen speakers.
Five weeks later a famous art institution asks a prominent professional to
donate an evening to consult the institute. She does, rushing from dinner to
arrive early. A week later she, like her three fellow contributors, receives a two-
paragraph form letter. With it is a certificate for 20 percent off any art shop
purchase exceeding $50. In short, the institute thanks the woman for her entire
evening away from her family and for $425 worth of professional advice by
agreeing to make a slightly smaller profit on her next significant purchase.
How would you feel about those services? Would you contribute to their
success? Would you promote and patronize them?
Would you recommend them?
And these experiences also make me wonder: Did these services know the
impression they were making and the harm they were causing?
Have we forgotten to say thank you? Have you forgotten?