How To Show True Appreciation To Your Customers

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recorded 11.7.22 at The Nashville Association of Sale Professionals -NASPnet Meeting

Transcript: 

Terry Lancaster

Close your eyes for me. Take a good deep breath. Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, out of your head. Do you feel perfectly relaxed? And what I want you to think about is I'm just thinking about in this moment right here, right now. What are you thankful for?

In this moment what's going on good in your life? We're here we're all gonna move over here. We're all in air conditioned. rooms or heated rooms. Nobody's cold. Nobody's too hot. Nobody's getting wet. I don't think anybody's hungry. Today. Everyone's everyone's had a good breakfast. What are you thankful for right now? Right here on a Monday morning on zoom with the Nashville Association of sales professionals. Think about that. Keep breathing. And I want you to kind of slowly expand that out from from this morning to your life in general. What's going on good in your life at this point in your life, with your with your children in college or with your job or your ability to pay for the roof over your head and pay for your car and pay for the things you need. What's What are the good things in your life?

Quit letting an imaginary there and then screw up a perfectly good here and now

And then most importantly, what you to think about those good things in your life. And I want you to think about the people that are attached to them. Who are the people in your life that make the good things in your life? Possible? Think about that for a second. If you wanted to go ahead and write it down, write some of these down what you're thankful for, is who you're thankful for. So so you have something to work on later because we're going to work on that. 

But more than more than anything more than more than what's more likely to be honest and who's more who's, who's making the good things possible in your life. I just want you to feel great joy for me. It's good to be alive and urgently Tennessee. Any good to be here. I'm grateful for each and every one of you for sticking in and showing up today.

So today, we're going to talk about what we're grateful for, and how to be more grateful and how to express express our gratitude. I am in addition to the book How To Sell More Cars I wrote the book, better self help for the rest of us gym. The gym is a resume, literally in this book. As he says it tells more about Terry Lancaster than you could ever possibly want to know and it does. It tells everything all my dirty laundry is is right out there in the open with the with my neck and given the practices and everything else and it's about improving your life making your life better one step at a time. 

Namely, by not letting an imaginary there and then screw up a perfectly good here and now that is the human condition. That is the human condition that we always want something else we want something different. We want something that we can't have something that we don't have it we've spent so much more time thinking about what we don't have that we often forget to be grateful for what we do have now I wrote the book better self out for the rest of us and one entire chapter that book is on gratitude. And that's why that's actually that's why I penciled myself in for this meeting today. I wanted to be the speaker because I wanted to speak on gratitude, because I wrote this and 100% believe this to be true. 

The surest path to happiness is spending more time being grateful for what's right in your life, and less time worrying about what's wrong. 

And being grateful for what's already like that, that that brings in every form of complaining and griping is is an expression of ingratitude. If you're if you're complaining about your life, you're complaining about your customers, you complain about your business, you're not being grateful for them and business goes for business and Biden is invited and business is appreciated and gratitude.

Gratitude has completely changed my life and that gratitude is the reason I wrote a book I was sitting just outside on my deck. And you know, my life was was a little bit of turmoil. My business was not doing well. I was not the healthiest thing that I wanted to be. And I'm sitting on my desk and it occurred to me that it all the things that were wrong with them I was because I was thinking about what I wanted in my life. I want it to be this huge success. I wanted to build skyscrapers and make millions and you know, I wanted to I wanted I wanted to live the American dream the outsized American Dream that we all want to live. At least that's what I kept telling myself and the more I kept thinking about those things and striving for those things, and struggling to get those things the unhappier I became 

my life changed the moment that I decided that that wasn't really what I want. What I wanted was to make my actual life better. And in order for me to make my life better, I had to start being more grateful for the things that are in my life embrace that gratitude expresses itself in lots of different ways. It's I mean, it's emotionally stable our mind. Our mind function is a habit and we it's like a there's a thing called confirmation bias. 

The more you think about a thing, the more that thing is going to appear in your life. 

And it's not it's not Mojo. It's not it's not the attraction. It's not the law of attraction. It's not the secret from the movie. It's 100% purely a function of the way your brain works and you're spending all of your time thinking about what could go wrong. Thinking about things that are not up to par or you're thinking about things that you do not have in your mind is a seeking device, your mind is going to be looking around for those things if you're if you're if you spend all you're not thinking about what makes you miserable. Your mind is going to say you know what, you're right. There's another one of those things, it makes you miserable and you're going to see them everywhere. He goes just like if you buy if you buy a yellow car and you think you're the only person in the world drives a yellow car. Committed to drive off the lot in the yellow car. You're gonna see yellow cars everywhere, because the mind sees what you put it. It's what's there. It's how you find things. And if you it's like a dirt road, if you if you drive down these dirt roads, you've learned it the more you drive down the road, the deeper the roads on it become and if you're thinking about being miserable, then those those are the ruts. They're gonna get deep and that's where the car is gonna go. If you're thinking about the things that you don't have and what's wrong with your life, those are where the roads are gonna get deeper, and those are where you're going to go. And happiness. Happiness is one of those funny things and the more you strive and seek and reach for happiness, the harder it is to grab onto because it's always just out of reach. It's always just elusive. But there's one way that I know of to actually bring happiness into your life without striving it without seeking for happiness is a byproduct of gratitude in your life. If you can take those dirt Deep Roads, those ruts that are in the road and make them ruts think about how grateful you are for your family and how grateful you are for your best furs and how grateful you are for the opportunity to earn money sitting in your in your bedroom, wearing a jacket and no pants and did not actually leave and get out into the real world. If you can if you can concentrate on the things that you're grateful for and make those your primary same resistance makes that your natural language your native language and your your factory default setting your factory default settings for gratitude. Everything's going to suddenly look a whole lot better. Especially with your customers by bridge coming in especially especially with with with your customers. 

Business goes where businesses is invited and where business is appreciated. 

As salespeople we've got the invitation part down. If you go if you go over to Barnes and Noble or you You log on to Amazon, there are so many books of how to close sales and there's entire industries, marketing industries and advertising industries and agencies like myself, who are designed their primary purpose is to get you new customers. We want new customers because that's what every cell garden what we got to get new customers need new business, new business we're all about and in the business. The closing ratio is the metric above all metric how many people use both What's your closing percentage we worry about we worry about in finding the new customers into our life. And we spend less time concentrating on the customers that we already have because again, that's the human default condition. We want the next new shiny thing because the next new shiny thing is always going to make us happier, whether it's the new car or the new customer. But the truth is the next new shiny thing isn't always the best. thing because I promise you, your best customers.

Your best customers are people who are all ready your customers and cost they I've got a joke that I tell them when I'm training people and then why why did cardio specifically why car dealers and why do any business spend so much money attracting new customers as opposed to keeping the ones that they have? Why did they spend so much money it actually the number is called seven times more to attract a new customer than it does to keep a customer and are already happy. And the joke is they spend so much money because it's so darn expensive. They have to you have to spend money to chase after new customers. It's expensive to bring in new customers, but it's not expensive at all to keep the customers that you have happy so you don't We don't have to close your eyes for meditation on this but think about this. if a handful of customers that I work with right now, were completely all in on my business. They were all in on all of the services that I provide and they love theory to that and they and they left me great reviews on Google and Facebook and Amazon. And they gave me referrals to their friends and people that they do business with. If every customer I was all in, I'm gonna have more business than I could possibly handle. And I wouldn't I couldn't even accept new customers much less go out looking for the suit. Your business is the same way. Your guess best customers are already your customers. But but they're not all. So if you concentrate your targeting and your marketing on these customers, you've got an opportunity to the the customers that you have,

It costs seven times more to bring in a new customer than keep an current customer

 They close it out four times faster. Therefore today then the sales cycle is four times shorter for customers that you already have because you don't have to do the dance of getting to know each other building building likeability factor and building the trust factor because all of that is already ingrained in the work is already done. They already they already they already trust you. They're just waiting on. Closing number that closing percentage is skyrocket. If you spend more time working with customers that you already have people who have a prior relationship with you and your business, they close at a much much much higher rate than we strengthen strangers than new customers then new prospects.

You want to improve your closing ratio? Spend more time talking to people who already know like and trust you meeting the customers that you already have the customers that you already have there. You're going to have a higher margins on those. They're going to have bigger tickets and you're gonna make more money because they're not shopping and do the death on the internet going going to Google and Facebook and trying to find the lowest price on something like that. Because he was worried about a penny on a direct mail piece, but he was a guy that didn't know so guys people that you know they're not they're not going to be searching they don't have pity on a crock is not their primary concern. Because it's worth the pity for them to do business with someone that they know they can do business with to your best customers are already your customers and we talked about how gratitude can change your life. But here's the flip side of gratitude. And this is this is the problem that we have and hopefully the problem that we're gonna solve today. We're grateful I mean, I mean we intellectually intellectually we're grateful for our customers. We know our customers, they're the people that let us live in the house and they're the people that pay or aren't able to pay the electricity and keep a roof over our head. We're grateful for our customers. But we don't always express it. We don't often say it out loud. It's not just our customers. It's our life to our spouses, our children, our parents, and there's a preacher and I quote him a lot because I ended up flipping past his show. They stomped on late night TV comes on channel for late night after Saturday Night Live at midnight on Saturday, Andy Andy said is going to be on there. And I saw him went up and he was talking about it may have been last night and he was talking about gratitude. And we know all the wonderful stuff that gratitude does for us. It makes your life better. It makes the way you perceive the world better.

Unexpressed gratitude feels like ingratitude.

If you never say thank you, you never go out of your way to say thank you and say how much I appreciate that about my favorite southern thing. I've got lots of lots of friends from Canada and up north moved down here and we'll go out to eat or something both the restaurant on July and what I get there. I say the most southern thing ever, which is I appreciate you. So that's just the way I grew up saying it so if you don't if you don't learn to express the appreciation if you never say I appreciate you. Thanks man. Thanks for the business. Thank y'all. Whatever you want to say if you never express it, then it goes unexpressed and it goes unbuilt because they can't read your mind.

If you're not saying thank you so often that they're sick of hearing it. They just begin to assume that it's taken for granted and more often than not, our old customers are taken for granted because we spend so much time chasing those new customers chasing chasing the shiny new thing. But if you're spending all of your time and all of your money and all of your energy chasing new customers chasing that shiny new thing, then you're old customers. Over time that unexpressed gratitude starts to feel like ingratitude. And I when I was getting ready to do this last night, I said, Well, let me just check on Google. I wonder. I wonder why customers leave. So I went to Google and I asked, Why do customers leave? And when you go to Google, and this is one of the top things so you know, it's true if it's on the internet, according to the US Chamber of Commerce. 68% of customers leave because they're upset with the treatment they've received and often a customer get the impression of not feeling valued. And this accumulates over a period of time, rather as a result of a specific interaction. So customers leave not necessarily because because you know, they bought a product from you that wasn't it wasn't up to par there. Maybe there wasn't a treat that it's something a single point that made them discontent, but over time, your expression of gratitude. You're You're just not saying I appreciate you you're not saying thank you leads to the feeling of your customers taking feeling unappreciated. And feeling and value and value goes where value is given.

If they're not feeling the love, you ain't gonna keep getting the money.

So say thank you. This is simple. It's as simple as that you have customers now you have customers that you dealt with. We had a guy here speaking at NASA about a year ago who wrote a whole book on winning back old customers because because they're they're so your customers that you have now. Your own customers who haven't been around while your family and your friends say thank you. And this This is this is the start of November it is the Thanksgiving month and Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday. It's somehow slightly less commercialized and Christmas. It's before the whole but the whole Christmas hotspot is your last chance to really be human before because Christmas is so out of control. But it's it's an easy it's an easy target because you have permission to say thank you for every single person in your life, every single customer in your life now and in the past, your chance to show appreciation your chance to develop some new mind runs in your brain to make you see the great glory of the life that we've that we're living and to make your customers feel appreciated so that they stick around and don't begin to feel underappreciated because if they feel underappreciated, they will be gone. So I promised you 17 reasonable 17 ways to say thank you. This is nothing I've done those. 

Custom thank you cards for your customers

I said Thanksgiving cards, I said Thanksgiving cards and thank you cards. I've been doing I've been saying thank you cards I was 24 years old as a sales manager of a radio station in Tupelo, Mississippi. I bought a stack of thank you cards and every new customer that the radio station got. They got a thank you card whether you know whether the biggest customer or somebody spending 20 bucks on sponsoring the high school football game. They got a thank you card from the sales manager. And that made all the difference. And I've been doing I've been sending thank you cards to customers every day every month for the last 30 years no matter what business I've been in because nothing sells like appreciation. And so that's my favorite way to say thank you is because it has it. It puts it out in the real world and it gives you some physical touch. We do so much stuff on Facebook and emails and in digital now that that sometimes it also often gets lost but a physical thank you card, or any kind of physical Thank you whether it's a thank you card. Or a box of brownies or goodies or sending someone a book or anything physical in the world is a physical manifestation of your appreciation. And the more you can bring your appreciation into the physical world, the more it's going to get shared and notice I also do a lot of video messaging I use video messages a couple of different ways you can send them on Facebook, you can send them on LinkedIn. And you can send them send them just on text you record a video on your phone and shoot it to someone just right there. There's lots of ways to send a video message even there's even a button it's an audio message on LinkedIn now just push the button and it's just like sending a voicemail. Except you never have to wait. You never have to wait dial the numbers. You never have to wait for the phone's ringing. You never have to wait to listen to the outgoing voicemail message that you have you push a button and say Bethany Benson thank you so much for showing up for the next meeting today. I appreciate you always being there, boom. And it's there. To recess to three to three seconds to express your appreciation. You can do that on audio. You can do it on video. If you feel Froggy. You can send messages on LinkedIn and Facebook and your other social media. You can send emails, you can send text texts are much better than emails because 98% of text in the first 10 minutes at present and email gets read when people get around to it. So so my 17 ways that you can say thank you that we haven't uncovered yet my favorite two are sending thank you cards in the Thanksgiving cards. And sending video and audio messages over social media. What are your favorite ways to say thank you hey, go ahead.

Unknown Speaker
So I'm like you Manet is a really good company and they teach whether you get a new customer or like I tried twinkly lights before Black Friday in getting in November so the sample to like they my hair care on my work. So we liked the little products. But I also I love to do that voice message or at that time but people love your visual like no one's done that. Thank you cards for the birthday and thank you so that's a good one too. I like I like those

Terry Lancaster
are good. Jim Forbush How do you say thank you?

Yeah, it's a combination of several things that you've used. I still like the thank you notes. The video and one thing I do specifically with the video when I thank someone is I tried to single out something specific, not appreciate your continued business and support and appreciate your business and I really enjoyed putting together that TV table. You know, thank you for thinking of me when it came time to have that assembly. And next thing I know I'm doing work for their friends because they they feel I don't want to say obligated that's too strong a word but they feel they need to help continue to help this. So you know I've done this to my whole career to the credit I did the same same kind of thing. So you know mentioning something specific about it. So it actually

I was obligated isn't my word but that's fairly goes there's a thing called the law of reciprocity that if you do something nice for someone who puts a little button in their brain that I need to do something nice for them, and they will refuse to do that. But it is a function of the way the brain works. The brain releases releases serotonin dopamine, you get a thank you card. Everyone wants to feel appreciated. I'm a big believer in the Dale Carnegie system. And one of the things that one of his main rules is all people great and small, want to feel appreciated, which is one of our most ingrained human desires. So if I get a thank you card in the mail, that's from Jim Berg motion says thank you I get a little shot heavy juice in my brain dopamine and sounds like Oh, that's awesome as Jim sent me the car that Sweden so budget, definitely sent me a video that's so sweet. I get happy smile and your brain when you're happy and you smile and you get the happy juice going in your brain your brain is a seeking mechanism. It's going to start looking for more opportunities to smile, more opportunities to feel appreciated. And if I know Jim appreciates me when I send in business, I want to feel appreciated. I'm gonna send him more business. It's really that simple.

Well one of the big one of the biggest methods of appreciation is you can refer their business to someone else. Wow. I mean, you know, not only are you there, you know they're they're working with you but then you send them or refer you know, even if it doesn't ultimately work out. We hope it does. But, you know, referring business to somebody is a tremendous way to say thank you. I mean, it's hard to come up with something any stronger. Well,

so So referring, the two big ones are referring business and someone and reviewing their business I one of the things I say is find your people and lift them up. When we talk about social media and we all want to go on Facebook and talk about what our thing is talking about how fast we can put together that playsets and how our dry hair conditioning. Air conditioner is better than the other dry hair conditioners. But the greatest thing that you can do is to promote their business to send it to send them customers to send them business to shine a spotlight on them to lead them reviews on LinkedIn and Google that they go Oh yeah. And it's just again the law of reciprocity. If I if I send you business or I leave a review for you, because I appreciate you, you're gonna feel appreciated and you're gonna send value and it starts it starts the feedback loop. How can I get some more of that? That's the good stuff. So send them business, introduce them to people who are really great networkers one of the greatest thing we can do is to network and introduce them to the people that they want to do. That's why I asked when he came in, who is it that you want to meet? Who can I introduce you to? How can I bring value into your life? Any other Bob you have that you've been quiet today? You snuck in at the end? Do you have anything to add? committed? Tell us about yourself.

You start on YouTube.

Yeah, I'm sorry. Difficult in my PC right what I was trying to click to go decided you want to reset itself. I guess it's getting slower. Like longer dial it back up in Arizona. So yeah, it's basically he's like who thank you is a big part of it. And thank you with the business. So once you guys hear that perspective, so this one will pop in and look at my support.

Thanks for Bobby.

Talk to your buddy that will get something worked at work worked out with him. Who else has anything to add before we before we get ready to wrap this up in Asia on April?

Unknown Speaker
Oh, honestly, I not really much to add because I found the same formula every time that I work with someone it's always send them a thank you note. And potentially thank you video kind of depends on their mode of communication that they like best. And then I usually follow that up with a separate Thank you card that usually comes about two to three months after we've done business where I then we'll go back in and reflect on something that they said in their conversation with me during that time period. And I liked doing that because then I feel like I'm sending it outside of the box and it's kind of a time that they are not expecting it. And so they've kind of entered my thoughts in a time period they were there not expecting to have entered my thoughts so it generally that usually leads to subsequent bookings.

Terry Lancaster
Yeah, because Because sending the thank you card when they do business that seems compulsory and maybe that's a genuine there, Brian, they go well, John just had this me thank you card for that or it's part of the benefits. He said the blue lighter and out of the blue for no good reason. You know, it's like Oh, how sweet and it starts to starts to drop that reciprocity train. So we got it's it's Monday, November 7, we've got three more remaining Nashville online meetings here for the rest of the year. I've got to get some really good meetings but April, you know, Jason strain down in Columbia, MD. So Jason is a buddy and a client of mine in Colombia. He owns a real estate agency. He just started up from scratch about maybe a year year and a half ago, and he's got this really thriving and growing real estate agency there in Colombia. And so up until about a year and a half ago, Jason was a drug dealer. So what will pharmacist so so he's a, he's going to join us to talk about the marketing tools that he used to grow his business, how he went from from dealing drugs to owning a thriving real estate agency in about a year and a half. We're gonna learn about that vote we're going to learn with meeting with Dave Castro. Who's going to talk about about networking and and a guy named Chris Kelso sales trainer from here in Nashville and he's got a new book out. So we've got a couple of good meetings coming up over the next couple of weeks. Jim, what do you have going on in Murfreesboro?

Well, you know, if zoom meetings, if you really like to meet people in person, and in addition to the Zoom meetings are paying you're anywhere within a reasonable distance shine. You may not want to drive to Murfreesboro, April, maybe, but you know, everybody else says no to she can get to Murfreesboro on the second and fourth Mondays. We meet at the DoubleTree Hotel in their restaurant. And we have been it's been slow rebounding from all the shutdown. I think a lot of people are working from home now. And it's like you know it when they were in their office, it was easy. I can just go over there and pop over and have lunch and network, but to get go from home and actually get dressed and go out. So it's been kind of slow, but we've been 10 1214 People sometimes. Great meetings, we've always got interesting speakers. Of course, I never plan and have the list in front of me when we have these calls. And despite the fact carry asks me every single time someday I'll figure it out. But you know, we always have great in person speaking great in person interaction. Please try to make it I do have I don't know, for those people that have attended the Murfreesboro meetings, even the Brentwood meetings that remember Harry Ballard. He was a fixture at these meetings or Harry had was diagnosed with cancer and has passed away. So we're we're all very disappointed to hear that I don't want to bring you down no to this. But you know, I think it's important that we know that know this information about our fellow members and people who we have gotten very close to as a result of these meetings. But I get it. I will take if you've put in your best email address. I will make sure that you get the invitations for upcoming meetings. Please, please please hassles along to other people that you meet networking meetings and say hey, why don't you try jumping on the next Zoom meeting? Or you're right Murfreesboro, you'd enjoy you might enjoy going to these. You know that's how virtually everybody there's a few people that have found it here and there on their own. But virtually everybody that attends was invited by someone