Individually Tailor Your Service for E1™ Results

Quite a few years ago, I began using a standard airport sedan service for my countless trips to and from the five Southern California commercial airports that I utilize. It’s rather fitting since it: 1) Allows me to fly out of and back into diverse airports (magnificent for scheduling); 2) Work en route to and from the airport; and, 3) It’s only $10 more per trip than what mileage and parking would cost my clients.

When I originally arranged to make use of the sedan company – A & L Transportation – the owner, Lorenzo Lopez, met me at my house for the opening voyage. Lorenzo is a marvelous E1™ fellow and in a much safer line of work (his preceding job was a professional football/soccer referee in Columbia; He’s been kidnapped three times and had two death threats). As we first met at my home, he picked up my computer backpack and noticed the Oklahoma Sooners luggage tag. The tag displayed merely the letters “O.U.”

“Ohio State alum?” Lorenzo asked.

“No, Oklahoma,” I replied. No harm, no foul and off we went to the airport.

The next evening, Lorenzo picked me up from the airport for the late night trip home. Waiting for him to pull up to the curb, I noticed a large sign he had purposefully placed in the passenger side of the windshield. The sign read, in crimson lettering, “O.U.” You would have thought that Oklahoma head football coach Bob Stoops was the anticipated pickup and the company was renamed E1™ Sedan Service.

I was impressed – and proud to be a customer of his E1™ business. This attentive act was individually tailored service for a prospective lifetime customer. I’ve been a weekly customer and source of referrals ever since.

Individually tailored service isn’t held in reserve for the small business that sees just a few customers each day. And it’s not a practice that large businesses must surrender as technology helps them administer their bulky customer base. All sizes of businesses can – and should – offer individually tailored service. Software or not, here are three E1™ ideas to lend a hand to your organization as you work toward building lifetime relationships through individually tailored service.

1. With every conversation – in person, via telephone, via instant message chat – recognize your customer by their first name. Thank your customer for choosing your business. Thank your customer for being a repeat or elite customer. Acknowledge that your customer has a choice and you’re glad they chose you. If you know them personally, or have that data, ask about their kids, business, or vacation they’ve just returned from. To quote my friend and professional speaker Jim Cathcart, “The highest level of business is an act of friendship.” Be an E1™ friend to your customers at the outset.
2. Send your customers a birthday card. Make it an authentic card and not an email greeting. Make the heart of the card their birthday. Your customers know who you are and what you do. Business can come about later – It’s your customer’s birthday. Southwest Airlines sends me a birthday card each November 14 and I flashily display the card on the fireplace mantle. Your customers will love that you’re thinking of them on their distinctive day.
3. On the anniversary of your customer’s relationship with you, call them. Do more than simply express gratitude to your customer. Uncover if there are products or services that you offer that can make their lives and businesses more efficient or productive. Based on the customer information you by now know, make an individual suggestion of how one of your products might add value to their business or life. Note: This is not the time to pitch your product of the month (most agree this tactic is a waste of time and resources, as well as maddening for your customers). This E1™ anniversary call is a time for a well-researched, planned conversation with your customer to support you in improving your customer’s loyalty. Let them discern that you’re thinking specifically of them as you present your proposal.

Simply put, listening to what your customers attach importance to puts you in a place that allows you to tailor your product or service to fit their precise need. The E1™ sales and service leader takes the necessary steps to win, secure, and increase the customer’s lifetime relationship with your business.

Heck, Lorenzo Lopez knows this lesson. Now if he will just modify his Town Car horn to play “Boomer Sooner.”

E1™ Four-Year Old Pays No Attention to Conventional Wisdom

Warning! This is an E1™ Proud Daddy post. One that is capable of instantaneously helping you realize your goals at a pace more rapidly than your fiercest competitors, external influences, and The Other 99 Percent (TO99) believe is, in due course, achievable.

My exquisite wife, Jayne, home schools our four-year old daughter, Molly. Early, last year, Jayne – with poise – approached me about the thought of home schooling Molly through the second grade, a timeline that coincides with our plans to build a home closer to a breathtaking college preparatory school we wish for Molly to attend. Being the Libertarian-minded, Cato-loving, Reason-reading, competition-and-choice fellow that I am, I whole-heartedly was of the same mind with Jayne’s splendid aspiration. On balance, Jayne has the desire, skills, and discipline to succeed in anything she puts her mind, choices, and actions to. E1™ preschool, here we come.

Fast forward one year later – this morning to be precise. Molly eagerly knocked at my office door and I could distinguish she was awfully thrilled and geared up to show something to me. As I welcomed her into my office, she excitedly put on view her completion certificate for the Spectrum Reading Workbook – Grade K. Simply put, Molly is two years to the lead of where she should be – if we accept as true what other, outside forces determine where one should be. Since we are E1™ thinkers and doers, I appreciate that you don’t bestow any credibility to what TO99 tell you is up to standard.

Jayne, Molly, and I joyfully celebrated, high-fived, chanted, ran about the house, skipped on the tile, had a glass of milk, scared the cats, and heaps of other four-year old antics (and several of my own 41-year old antics, too). As I proudly sauntered back into my office and closed the door, I intrinsically became conscious that one of the countless reasons Molly did so well was because no one told her where she should be or what she could do. Jayne and I allowed Molly to pursue her interests, provided her encouragement, endowed her with support, invested in resources, and observed the consequences of success that appeared.

Oh, believe me; the unconstructive forces of Suburbia sought for Molly to believe in where those off-putting influences thought she should be. I have collided with too many people who clumsily rely on another entity to exclusively cultivate their child’s intellect. Why, even in my mailbox, I received a pre-school advertising leaflet boldly boasting of a summer curriculum that would cover nine letters in the alphabet (A through I) over three months. Nine letters. Our 26-letter alphabet. Three months. I even became aware of a pre-school dropout who was “so over preschool” that she needed a multi-month escape, yet she cannot write her first name. In each set of circumstances, outside forces – powerful ones, too – dictated one’s limits. This runs contrary to every trace of E1™ thinking. This frame of mind and fruitless practice results in nothing close to E1™ outcomes.

This post is not a disapproving fume in opposition to the public or private educational structure. It’s an annoyed tirade critical of the limitations placed upon us at an early age; a practice of restrictions and boundaries that can steer our accepted wisdom through life.

Notify ten of your relatives, neighbors, or colleagues what you unquestionably aim to pull off in the next five years. Heck, enlighten them with what you intend to accomplish in the next year. Observe how hurriedly your plans and aspirations are censured, devalued, and even scoffed at. No matter what you are seeking to achieve, it will promptly be noticeable from other’s world view. It becomes apparent that your E1™ world view has zero in common with their world view. And many will tell you what they want you to believe about hopes, endeavors, and accomplishment. And it’s not E1™. Thoughtfully pay no attention to everything they pronounce, recommend, or put forward. Their assistance will not give you E1™ results.

In its place, think as if you are the only one capable of determining how great you can be and how much you can accomplish. For all intents and purposes, you are.

Because of Molly’s success today, I changed my seven-year business growth timeframe to six years. Same results that I seek out, just a year before I assumed I could achieve them. Why? Frankly, no one is telling me that I can’t, shouldn’t or won’t.

And no one ever will. You?

Elite thinking. Elite choices. Elite actions. Elite results. That’s E1™.

 

When Friends Abuse Your E1™ Leadership

Congratulations. You’ve been promoted. You’re moving on up because you’re living the E1™ professional life. And now your, formerly, side-by-side-next-to-one-another-cubicle friends from the workplace are working for you.

Do you want your old job back, yet?

It’s a disquieting feature of leadership – at some stage you’ll administer or directly supervise those you once called peers. Most of the time, you and your direct reports are working on projects to reach a common goal for your department or company. However, once in a while, that friend and colleague may anticipate – perhaps expect – for you to make an exception to a rule because of your handy relationship. This is treacherous country for the reason that others you lead are watching your every move. Your every E1™ move.

One of my cherished friends is a regional President for a worldwide organization. This President recently hosted an invitation-only event for a number of internal leaders and top members of the organization. It was a limited event that many looked forward to attending. They had earned the opportunity and were fully qualified as per the acknowledged guidelines.

Enter disorder.

A co-worker, friend, and direct report of the President impulsively – exclusive of the President’s support or knowledge – brought a non-affiliated friend. As the direct report entered the meeting, he greeted the President with a smile and, in a taking-you-for-granted approach, declared, “I hope it’s OK if I brought So-and-So.”

Not an E1™ move. More like an “Other 99″ move.

In principle, it wasn’t OK. So-and-So was not invited. So-and-So was not a member. For all intents and purposes, So-and-So would never be a member. And this was an event solely for leaders and leading members of the organization. These members were proud to be included.

The President had two choices: 1) Make an exception and allow So-and-So to attend; or, 2) Support the rules, expectations, and norms of this event for the sake of those in attendance (who were following the rules, expectations, and norms).

The President chose the latter. The President made an E1™ decision. The direct report rapidly left with So-and-So never to return. Those attending observed as the President respected the conventions that governed the group. If he made an exception for one, he would ultimately make an exception for all and lessen the influence of his leadership. Those in attendance, stunned at the nerve of the direct report, thanked the President for demonstrating E1™ leadership on their behalf.

As we develop in leadership, we begin to grasp that a few of our decisions will not give pleasure to all on our team. Some of those friends who now work for us may anticipate exceptions. Making exceptions is not a responsibility for E1™ leaders.

One of our roles as E1™ leaders is that of protector. We protect our teammates when we support their decisions. We protect our teammates when we lobby for essential resources. We protect our teammates when we make decisions that assist the overall interests of the group, not just a particular participant. That’s a chief part of E1™ leadership. A part and consequent action for you, that may irritate one, but will encourage and infuse assurance in 99. Make E1™ decisions.

Elite thinking. Elite choices. Elite actions. Elite results. That’s E1™.