Sweeten the Deal
Posted by Ilka Flood | Posted in Customer Appreciation, SendOutCards | Posted on 14-07-2009
A little touch of kindness goes a long ways. So does a nice gesture. A piece of chocolate. A brownie or cookies. Have you ever noticed the dish of candy in some professional offices? It’s not for the employees (although they might enjoy it too). It’s for the clients. There’s something about chocolate that gets us into a good mood. I’ve never seen a person eating chocolate and being crumpy at the same time. Maybe before, but not after putting that delicious treat in their mouth. And when we are in a good mood we are more likely to buy something, agree with or do business with someone.
Gail was a freelance graphic designer with the typical self-employed person’s problems:
lots of work, but little money coming in. Although her business was brisk and her billings
were high, her clients simply weren’t paying their bills. “My money seemed stuck in their
bank accounts, ” says Gail. Gail tried a number of tactics to convince her creditors to
pay – from letters that said “Please pay soon” festooned with smiley faces to diplomatic
phone calls – but nothing worked. Desperate, she stumbled on what turned out to be a
brilliantly effective idea: bribing them with baked goods. “I would send out reminders
of past-due invoices with the enticement that if paid by a specified date, I would reward
the client with fresh baked cookies, brownies, cake – whatever they wanted. And it worked.
From The Power of Nice…Let ‘Em Eat Cake, by Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval, pp 31
They say, “you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.” Or in this case with cookies and brownies.
Another example, my husband, who’s in the mortgage industry needed a loan closed before the holidays last December. As we all know, things move very, very slow right before the holidays. To expedite the loan, he send a box of cookies to the underwriter and what normally would have taken 2 – 3 weeks was done in just a few days.
Sweeten the deal!!
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