7. Give your customers more than they expect. Send thank you gifts to lifetime customers. E-mail them online greeting cards on holidays or birthdays. Award bonuses to your customers who make a big purchase.

8. Always be polite to your customers. Use words your welcome, please, and thank you. Be polite to your customers even if they are being irate with you. Always apologize to your customers should you make a mistake. Admit your mistakes quickly and make it up to them in a big way.

9. Reward customers a point for every one dollar they spend. Let's say customers can get a free computer for 300 points. That means customers will spend $300 dollars on your products and services to get enough points to get free computer.

10. Build strong relationships with your customers. Invite them to company meetings, luncheons, workshops or seminars. Create special events for your customers like parties, barbecue's, dances etc. This will make them feel important when you include them in regular business operations and special events.

Let’s lay out advantages and disadvantages for them clearly. And, yes, tell them about disadvantages as well as advantages. By doing so, we’ll increase our credibility. We might even learn something by writing advantages on one side of a page and disadvantages on other.

After we’ve made our case, we’ll try to stimulate feedback. Try to get a sense of how our message was received and what response it got. Did they respond way we expected? Did a consensus begin to emerge?

If not, we need to start process over again, with a new diagnosis. And, we’ll basically reiterate process. But, this time, put even more time into, and emphasis on, their assumptions and expectations. If process doesn’t work, it’s because they didn’t find enough benefits in our earlier communication.

In end, consensus is always about them. And, to get them to go along with our plans for change, we need to be as conscious of their needs as we are of our own.

Summarizing, think of consensus as end point of a process, rather than something we can immediately organize. That process starts with analysis and listening, then responds to what we heard in listening phase.

Robert F. Abbott writes and publishes Abbott's Communication Letter. Learn how you can use communication to help achieve your goals, by reading articles or by subscribing to this newsletter. An excellent resource for leaders and managers, at: http://www.communication-newsletter.com