A few days ago, I got a call from FedEx.  It would be difficult to find someone in the United States that doesn’t know who Federal Express is.

Every year FedEx ships billions of packages.  They have hundreds of airplanes in the air every single night.  A little know fact about FedEx is that every night sixteen airplanes are in the air completely empty and positioned in different parts of the country so they can divert those planes to any airport that has an overflow of packages or any airport with planes having mechanical difficulties.  FedEx use to have an advertising slogan:  When it absolutely, positively, has to be there overnight.  The company still lives by this motto today.

FedEx has grown from twelve small jets to one of the largest corporations in the world.  Yet they took time to call me. Why?  Because they noticed that although I have an account with them, I haven’t used the account very often.  They wanted to know what they could do to get more of my business.

I was impressed with the call.  I started to think about all the CEOs, presidents and business owners in this country who pay no attention whatsoever to their current client or customer list but yet are always trying to create sales, expand business and get new customers while at the same time ignoring current ones.

Think about it.

What can you do to impress your customers or clients to make them feel like you truly appreciate them and value their feedback? When your competitor calls on your current customers or clients (and they do) to prospect for business do they say:  No thank you – the people we do business with service us well and we wouldn’t think of changing.  Or do they say:  We might consider changing.  What do you have that may be of interest to us?

Your customers or clients should be nurtured in a professional manner to become advocates of your products or services.   Every time someone buys from you, the sales cycle should start over again and treat the current customer or client as though new due to your prospecting efforts.  In any relationship, never assume everything is okay.  Those relationships become old and broken rather quickly.  In business, that is something you can’t afford to have happen.