Now pull out a clean sheet of paper and write down this "to do" list...

1. Set goals for customer service that involve "WOW" customer service principles. Design a quality customer service program. Set a start date and end date for evaluation purposes.

2. Read a book a week on client relationship marketing and "WOW" customer service and give yourself a test to make sure you have retained information. Then USE it! Make sure all your employees do same to one degree or another.

3. Evaluate all your employees, are they happy, do have a vested interest in your success, would they want to be your client? What is their body language on job, enthusiastic, angry, indifferent, bored? Get rid of dead weight! If a customer is likely to meet your employees it MUST be a positive experience. Pay your front line employees what they are worth. Smiles and enthusiasm are worth at least $1.00 per hour.

3. Reduce advertising budget... increase marketing budget... understand difference.

4. Cut out or reduce systems that tend to isolate you from your customers, voice mail mazes, advertising campaigns designed for general public, autoresponders, self help kiosks or webpages, overseas customer service centers.

5. Increase communication through handwritten notes, visits with clients, feed back and brainstorming sessions that put client and business on same side of table as partners, reduce outsourcing, reward good clients frequently, use greeting cards with commerative stamps instead of postcards with bulk postage ( Customers think, "If I'm not worth 37 cents you don't need my business."), put some thought into client gifts (diabetics don't appreciate candy) and finally ask, ask, ask, ask, ask, ask, ask, for referrals! Then ask for referrals again.

Don't look to CRM to solve problems of customer loyalty. Look at your relationships with your clients.

Meredith Gossland is owner of Lasting Impressions2, a Small business marketing service, specializing in multicultural marketing and high quality low cost customer service. she can be reached at info@lastingimpressions2.com. http://www.lastingimpressions2.com

Meredith Gossland is owner of Lasting Impressions2, a Small business marketing service, specializing in multicultural marketing and high quality low cost customer service. she can be reached at info@lastingimpressions2.com. http://www.lastingimpressions2.com

However, their committing to take leadership involves your establishing a special relationship with them.

For instance, going back to example I used in Part One, if one is a floor sweeper, one does best floor sweeping, not simply by doing it but by taking leadership of floor sweeping.

Such leadership might entail: taking initiative to order and manage supplies; evaluating job results and raising those results to ever higher levels; having floor sweeping be an integral part of general cleaning policy; hiring, training, developing other floor sweepers; instilling a "floor sweeping esprit"that can be manifested in training; special uniforms and insignias; behavior, etc.; setting floor sweeping strategy and goals.

Otherwise, in a "doing" mode, one simply pushes a broom.

You may say, "Listen, Brent, a job is a job is a job. This leadership thing is making too much of not much!"

Could be. But my point is that applying leadership to a task changes expectations of task. It even changes task itself. Think of it, when we ourselves are challenged to lead and not simply do, our world is, I submit, changed. Furthermore, though you may order people to do a job, you can't order anybody to take leadership of it. It's their choice whether they take it or not.

This is where Leadership Talk comes in. Using it, you set up environment in which they make that choice.

The Leadership Talk is not only most important way to get cause leaders; it is only way to get them on a consistent basis.

In final part of this three part series, I'll show you how to develop and deliver a great Leadership Talks.

2005 © The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. All rights reserved.