Woodworking is one of the oldest crafts in human history. She...
A wonderful book by a successful entrepreneur from the USA, "Customers for Life", perfectly reveals a number of secrets of a successful business. In a difficult time of fierce competition in any market niche, it is important not only to maintain the level of sales, but also methodically increase the growing profit. How to do it? The answer lies in the literary work "Customers for Life".
When a person begins to read this book, he understands that in essence he has a practical guide to action, where the main idea is clearly expressed by certain rules on how to retain a client. Car dealership owner and author Carl Sewell has raised sales to incredibly high levels. With the help of simple manipulations and ingenuity, he quickly achieved an expansion of the client base, retention and attraction of new customers. In his book, Carl Sewell gives valuable advice to those who decide to increase sales and increase profits at times.
The bestseller is designed not only for a wide range of readers. It is a must-read for executives of small, small and large enterprises who want to reach a new level of sales. In the Customers for Life marketing guide, Carl Sewell covers topics such as how to better organize a company, conduct marketing, structure merchandising, redefine customer service, and more. level of salaries for employees before structuring large-scale projects.
The work "Customers for Life" is not only useful for self-education in the field of business relations. Reading it is interesting and fun. The special value of the content is that the book is written by a truly successful, established businessman, and not by some smart armchair professor or middle manager. The bestseller is easy to read, in one breath.
The plot of the book revolves around the relationship of the leader to consumers. Clearly formulated rules are provided, which should be followed in the process of cooperation with clients. That is, the author of the book, Carl Sewell, directly advises: “promise less, do more”, “if the client asks for something, the answer should always be “yes”, “monitor complaints, if there are none, then something is not so", "demonstrate a polite attitude towards people".
Great book with lots of helpful tips. Among others, one of the most productive is “Japanize”. What this means, you will definitely find out when you read the excellent guide for modern businessmen "Customers for Life".
On our literary site, you can download the book “Customers for Life” by Carl Sewell, Paul Brown for free in formats suitable for different devices - epub, fb2, txt, rtf. Do you like to read books and always follow the release of new products? We have a large selection of books of various genres: classics, modern science fiction, literature on psychology and children's editions. In addition, we offer interesting and informative articles for beginner writers and all those who want to learn how to write beautifully. Each of our visitors will be able to find something useful and exciting.
Customer service is a 24 hour job. In any case, it should be like this. First, clients may sometimes ask you to do something after 5:00 pm or on a Sunday. You can only come at nine and we close at eight? No problem. We will wait.
How much does one client cost?
The person who helped me calculate the true value of a customer was Tom Peters. He insisted all the time on being closer to the customers. With good service, the customer always comes back when he needs a new car. During his lifetime, he will pay us a lot - $332,000 to be exact.
Promise less, deliver more
For example, your key breaks in the lock. You call our auto center and we send a car to you; our employee on the spot makes a key for you, says: “Thank you for remembering us” - and leaves without taking the money. What do you think? You'll think we're great guys.
Fire the controllers
If you have controllers, get rid of them. They don't improve quality. Talk about mistakes. Keep track of every job that had to be redone. As soon as an error appears, fix it. Hold daily quality meetings to discuss issues.
The best service system
A friend of mine, director of the Center for Retail Studies at the University of Texas, has spent almost his entire professional life trying to figure out what customers want when they talk about quality of service. And I came to the conclusion that the best customer service system in the world is also the simplest: DO WHAT YOU PROMISE AND DO IT THE FIRST TIME.
The boss should be an example
A leader cannot only preach. He must lead by example. Leadership is efficiency. If one of your goals is impeccable cleanliness and you don't pick up trash in the parking lot when you see it there, don't expect any of your employees to do it.
If you only have time to read one customer service book in your life, read Customers for Life by Carl Sewell and Paul Brown. This is the bible of good service. The main idea is that rather than building a business on one-time sales, it is better to make friends out of customers and serve them all their lives.
If you have already read this book, then you already know how good it is. If not yet, here is a summary of the main thoughts. This, of course, is only a pale copy - the book contains a million living examples and useful little things that are not in this digest. But even that is better than nothing.
So, "Customers for Life":
1. Listen to customers and give what they need.
Do not assume that you yourself know the needs of customers. Find out for sure: ask at the checkout to fill out a short questionnaire. While the cashier counts the money or rolls the card, there is just a free minute.
In the questionnaire, ask at least about expectations (Are you satisfied or not?), About the compliance of the product and price (Do customers feel cheated?) And about the effectiveness of your work. Already these three questions will help to understand whether you work well or not.
Ask customers what they would like, but don't pressure them.
2. Do more than you promise.
There are two sides here. First, don't promise too much. If you don't live up to the client's expectations, it doesn't matter how well you did the job. The client will still be dissatisfied. In general, keeping promises is more important than any other part of the service.
Second - Do a little more than promised. A small bonus on top of what was promised is always delightful. Make a tour package - add a guide, a map and an international SIM card. If you are selling a computer, install free useful programs on it.
3. Smiles alone are not enough. Build a system.
Politeness and willingness to help is the icing on the cake. No one needs those smiles if you have queues, bad product, or let the customer down.
Build a working system. In such a system, work is done efficiently and on time. Eliminate as many bottlenecks as possible. Key processes are reinsured. Everyone knows what he is responsible for. The warehouse is in order. Calls are recorded, logs are kept automatically. In the toilet there is a list of items for the cleaner. The manager has all the control questions. Everyone knows what to do when something goes wrong.
A workable system is built from the question “What can break?”. Everything that can be automated.
4. If the client asks - say "Yes".
Provide additional services when the client asks. If you sell cars, you can rent them, and find a car service, and drive the car to another city, and call a taxi, and find a permanent driver, and change the wheel, and make a second key, and take the car for tinting or sewing a new one. salon.
Change the understanding of your mission: from “sell cars” (“sell tours”, “sell computers”) to “help the client”.
Economic effect: let's say you ordered a taxi for a client, gave 500 rubles to the driver. They acted in a friendly way. Result: a client is received for life, 500 rubles and 15 minutes of time are spent.
5. Fire controllers
Controllers are evil. If an employee knows that someone will finish after him, he works carelessly. Controllers reduce responsibility.
If an employee makes a mistake, he corrects his mistake on his own and free of charge. Everyone should understand this.
Each return and claim is a reason to figure out what went wrong. Be sure to get to the bottom of the cause and eliminate it. Maybe a person does not know how to do something - he needs to be taught and this information added to the corporate knowledge base. Each complaint should improve the system.
6. Pay employees like partners.
Link the salary of employees with indicators of their specific work, or better - with the indicators of the entire company. Each employee should feel personally responsible for their standard of living.
Pay more than the average in the market so that you line up with good specialists. Take care of people as partners. Grow them.
It's better to pay 20% more and get a 50% better job than pay like everyone else and lose customers.
7. Admit mistakes
Everyone is wrong. The question is not to never make mistakes (although this should be striven for), but to admit your mistakes and be able to correct them.
If you screwed up, admit your fault. Tell me what you're wrong about. Decide what you will do to correct the mistake. Do it. And do a little more than that.
Did you screw the wheel badly, did it break? Admit the mistake. Repair the wheel and everything broken because of it for free. Wash and vacuum the car, inflate the tires. Put a bouquet of flowers in the salon.
Shielding yourself and proving to the client that you are not to blame is a dead end. Suppose you justify yourself - what's next? The client is still upset and feels like you let them down. He will not return. And what's the point that you were right?
Clients for life Carl Sewell, Paul Brown
(ratings: 1
, average: 5,00
out of 5)
Title: Customers for Life
Author: Carl Sewell, Paul Brown
Year: 1998
Genre: Management, recruitment, Popular about business, Foreign business literature
About Clients for Life by Carl Sewell, Paul Brown
Carl Sewell is a successful businessman who has driven sales to unprecedented heights by attracting and retaining customers.
His book is a practical guide to working with clients (and along the way, and on the organization of the enterprise, marketing and merchandising). Sewell recommends that everyone bet on repeat customers, as a one-time selling mindset makes a business unsustainable. And it convincingly proves that in order to retain a client, it is necessary to reconsider your views not only on service as such, but also on the organization of work, wages, cleanliness of premises, landscape design and many other little things.
The book will be useful both for those who are just starting their business, and for those who are looking for ways to expand it further.
16th edition.
On our site about books, you can download the site for free without registration or read online the book "Clients for Life" by Carl Sewell, Paul Brown in epub, fb2, txt, rtf, pdf formats for iPad, iPhone, Android and Kindle. The book will give you a lot of pleasant moments and a real pleasure to read. You can buy the full version from our partner. Also, here you will find the latest news from the literary world, learn the biography of your favorite authors. For novice writers, there is a separate section with useful tips and tricks, interesting articles, thanks to which you can try your hand at writing.
Quotes from "Customers for Life" by Carl Sewell, Paul Brown
Good work means the following:
correct execution the first time;
having a plan of action for when something goes wrong.
Thus, a vicious circle is obtained. If you treat your customers well, they treat you well. If they treat you well, they will buy more. If they buy more, you will earn more and therefore treat them with even more attention.
Finding the reason why a product is not selling is just as important as finding the reason for good sales.
The clients are good. If a client says they have a problem, 99 percent out of 100 do. Don't let the remaining 1% change your attitude towards the 99%.
Kind treatment of people is only 20% of good service. The more important part is developing technologies and systems that get the job done right the first time. No amount of smiles will help you if your product or service doesn't suit your customer.
What is the benefit for the client?
Can the client easily understand what this benefit is?
How will the responsibilities of our employees change?
How will this idea or program affect our existing systems?
Are there examples of successful implementation of something like this? What can we learn from someone else's experience?
What can go wrong?
Will it give us an edge over our competitors?
How much is it?
Will it make money?
When should we start evaluating results?
Don't be afraid that someone will try to exploit you. As a rule, people only call when they really need help.
Do not take money for such additional services that are help. If you didn't ask a friend to pay for such help, don't ask the client either. Don't worry, you will earn in the future - more than you can imagine.
Avoiding any possible deviations is the most effective way to improve your service. Books by Edwards Deming, Eliyahu M. Goldratt (The Purpose book), Taiichi Ohno (the man who built the Toyota Production System), and Genichi Taguchi are excellent sources for building effective service systems.
The best example of developing a successful system is the story of McDonald's and french fries.
- Decide to be the best. Set your goals to the highest level; if you expect more, you will achieve more.
- The boss should be an example. A leader cannot only preach. He must lead by example. Leadership is efficiency. If one of your goals is impeccable cleanliness and you don't pick up trash in the parking lot when you see it there, don't expect any of your employees to do it.
- Celebrate your successes. This will reinforce the importance of what you believe in. Talk about your values and goals regularly. Mention the names of people who exceed the standards more often. And this information will be heard.
Free Download Clients for Life by Carl Sewell, Paul Brown
(Fragment)
In the format fb2: Download
In the format rtf: Download
In the format epub: Download
In the format txt:
Customers for Life, co-authored by Carl Sewell and Paul Brown, is a recognized best-selling business book, a trusted companion for those who start their own business or want it to prosper. It was created by a man who himself has achieved considerable success in business and, based on many years of experience, has developed his own strategy for communicating with customers. The Sewell Method has been tested by hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs around the world, and tested by cult marketers and business literature gurus Mann, Ivanov, and Ferber. All of them unanimously assert - "Sewell's ideas are feasible, and most importantly - they work."
Before moving on to the review of this book, it is worth recalling that books affect your future. So if you want to develop in business or in general, in life, read books.
Article menu:
Karl and Paul: a few words about the authors of the book
Carl Sewell is best known as a successful businessman who created one of the best car dealerships in the United States. For 30 years, he managed to do the almost impossible - to increase the value of his business from 10 million to 250 million dollars, and the company's profit increased in the same proportion. Carl says it's very simple - he just worked hard to attract and retain customers. His eternal motto is "Do what you promised and do it the first time."
For example, the service department of Sewell's company was the first to provide customers with a temporary car for the period while his car is being repaired. Moreover, the company's employees specially customize the car for the customer's house. Here is a prime example of customer focus.
Paul Brown acted as co-author of the book. As a professional writer, he has established himself as an expert on business topics. In addition to his work on Clients for Life, he is known for long-term collaborations with The New York Times and businessman Mark Stevens on Your Marketing Sucks!.
Brown sincerely admires Carl Sewell, his ideas and many years of work, and the writer calls the book "unusual", "stunning" and even "home". The last epithet “Customers for Life” deserved thanks to the simple and incredibly colorful manner of Sewell the narrator. He does not seek to teach, pour in special terms and paint the pages with intricate graphics. He talks about the everyday, jokes a lot, but behind all this lies serious things and daily painstaking work.
“This book is as serious and thoughtful as it is engaging and fun. It has a simple language, but the main idea is not at all simple.”
The main idea of the book, or why does business need regular customers?
Carl Sewell firmly believes that keeping customers and then turning them into regular ones is the key to a successful business, while the eternal pursuit of new customers can drive your business to a dead end. Sewell's idea of customer retention is based primarily on establishing "human, emotional connections." The author highlights a number of very convincing advantages of working with regular customers:
- It is much easier to sell services to an existing client, he already knows you and your product, and therefore your marketing costs are significantly reduced.
- You do not spend a lot of effort and resources hourly persuading the client to choose you. The main thing is that the experience of cooperation with you is positive, keep the brand and then people will not have to look for someone else.
- You get a huge advantage over competitors who don't turn customers into customers for life because your audience will never use their services.
- Minor price fluctuations will not affect regular customers. Checked - a person would rather overpay a little than turn to an unfamiliar supplier of goods or services.
- Existing customers respond favorably to new items, they are willing to purchase additional goods from you (for example, tea or coffee when buying bottled water, souvenirs and cards when ordering flowers, etc.).
Even the thesis list of the main advantages of working with regular customers proves that from a marketing point of view, such cooperation will be more profitable, productive and ... simple. So, maybe you should abandon impulsive one-time sales and start building long-term relationships with your customers? No one claims that it will be easy, but the long journey that you will overcome is worth it. The book "Customers for Life" will be your guide along the way, because the experience of its author is useful for any business.
“Systems, not smiles. Saying “please” and “thank you” does not guarantee that you will get the job done right the first time. Only a systematic approach can guarantee this.”
The main provisions of the book
The book consists of prefaces written by the publishers and Sewell and Peters themselves, an introduction, eleven parts, and an afterword by noted businessman Stanley Marcus.
In the introduction, the authors meticulously explain what the concept of “good service” hides. Good service, according to Sewall-Peters, is primarily driven by demand. A modern person is tempted by good service, he travels a lot, he has something to compare with. And most importantly, people are willing to pay for quality services. Get ready for the challenges that await you on the path to creating your ideal service. Among them:
- tendency to promise too much;
- the need for global improvements (partial changes have a short-term effect or may go completely unnoticed);
- the value of time (the ability to provide services with high quality and FAST);
- the ability to guess the desires of your audience, while being ahead of competitors;
- continuous improvement (your business cannot be static, success is continuous development and search).
In the course of their edifying narrative, the authors teach how to:
- hear the client and provide him with exactly what he wants;
- always provide good service;
- to hire and “educate” the best employees;
- analyze the results of the work and do work on the bugs;
- set the level of wages in order to receive full return and good service;
- be a leader and role model;
- take into account every little thing when communicating with a client;
- choose products that are easy to sell;
- use the positive experience of other companies;
- create an individual image;
- make customers come back.
“Make them come back. Ask customers what they want and give it to them again and again”
Carla Sewell
Of particular interest are the so-called "ten commandments" for customer service, which Sewell and his co-author placed in the book's introduction. They can be printed and hung on the wall above your desk or put in a diary. Let these simple rules always motivate you and remind you of the book you read.
- First the commandment just talks about how to get customers to return - you just need to do what they want and listen to their needs.
- Second the commandment calls for a systematic approach in building a service strategy.
- Third teaches to focus primarily on actions, not on promises.
- Fourth says “When your client asks for something, your answer is always “Yes”.
- Fifth“Fire your controllers and the entire customer relations department.”
- sixth makes you think that the lack of complaints from customers is also a signal for change, perhaps you have been static for a long time.
- seventh“Measure everything.”
- eighth urges not to forget about decent wages for their employees.
- ninth“Your mom was right. Show respect for people.”
- Tenth– use the experience of successful companies, bring their ideas to life in an improved form.
Follow the commandments, read "Clients for Life" and may you prosper!
Who is this book for?: for owners of large and small businesses, management consultants, general directors, commercial directors, marketing directors, heads of training departments and those who want to become successful and start their own business.
If development in business is not the only thing that interests you, we recommend reading a selection of the 10 best books on psychology.
"Customers for Life" - a must-have book for businessmen
5 (100%) 1 vote
