The Extra Mile

By Tom Branch, on February 10th, 2011

The personal quality necessary to achieve outstanding success in business is that you must be willing to go the extra mile.

The Extra Mile

Licensed from iStockPhoto

It’s the “Under Promise, Over Deliver” concept and “If you are always willing to do more than what you get paid for, the day will come when you will be paid for more than what you actually do.”

Robert Cialdini, in his book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, discusses what he calls the Law of Reciprocity. Basically it says that when you do something for someone else, there’s an unstated obligation for them to want to do something for you in return.

So when you go the extra mile for your customers or clients, you’ve just set the stage for that law to take effect. But it’s only on that “extra mile” that it works. When you give what might be considered “normal” service, or “adequate” service or even “good” service, you haven’t earned the right to expect that law to work for you.

In fact, even performing “knock-out” service often isn’t enough to gain you an advantage. We’ve all come to expect that from any number of businesses.

You’ve really got to do something special in order to gain an advantage in today’s highly competitive marketplace. Then, and only then, can you expect to create that nearly compelling desire in your customer to want to reciprocate. This simple truth says it all:

“There’s no traffic jam on the extra mile.”

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What Failures Don’t Like to Do

By Tom Branch, on October 16th, 2010

Success or Failure

The more you serve your customers and help them satisfy their needs, the more you will prosper.
 
And as a business owner, business manager, professional person or entrepreneur, serving your customers’ needs effectively means that you must do the things that unsuccessful business owners, managers, professionals, and entrepreneurs don’t do. The things that those unsuccessful people don’t do are the things that most of us don’t like to do either.

There is no doubt that it is difficult to work long hours or on weekends when your family is waiting for you at home, to have only a couple of “shoppers” stop by or to be stood up for an appointment someone made with you.
 
It’s tough to make telephone calls only to be met with hostile and rude people on the other end who curse at you or slam the phone down.
 
It’s discouraging to set goals, schedule interviews, explain the technical aspects and benefits of the products and services you provide, overcome customers’ objections and misconceptions, and go out of your way to give exceptional service, only to have your customer go elsewhere because they found the same product or service for a few dollars less.
 
Enough of these experiences can be discouraging for anyone. And after a while, some people just quit trying. They find it easier to adjust their standard of living downward to match their income, than to adjust their income upward to create their desired standard of living.

They are no longer in control. Inflation dictates the price of things they buy, and competition and luck determine how much they have to spend. Fortunately for them, many of their competitors are in the same situation.

Outstanding success is unusual and is dependent on many different factors. For some people, it just happens. They’re in the right place at the right time, they do nothing special, everything just falls into place for them. Others put in long hours and much work only to find average success.

Tom Branch, Broker, CDPE, SFR

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