It's the Customer, Stupid!: 34 Wake-up Calls to Help You Stay Client-Focused

Chapter 13. Client Loyalty Is Earned, Not Given

It's the client's loyalty to you and your institution that multiplies business. Good service leads to increased sales.

Customer loyalty has its roots in the basic premise that you must assume that the customer is telling the truth. Even though it may occasionally appear that customers lie to manipulate a situation, you still have to give them the benefit of the doubt—because the consequence is losing their loyalty to a competitor.

When you focus on making a customer instead of making a sale, the needs of the consumer come first. The so-called golden rule suggests that we should treat others as we want to be treated.

However, I don't want most people treating me the way they treat themselves. Instead, I think we need to treat customers the way they want to be treated. That's how you build loyalty.

Loyalty Is a Derivative of Ethics

Loyalty has its ancestry in ethics, which is simply based on doing the right thing. For nearly four decades, I have been an insurance agent for the Knights of Columbus Insurance. Our entire premise for doing business is based on the loyalty of our 1.8 million members to our superior insurance program.

It's no accident that the Knights of Columbus is extremely committed to doing the right thing for its members. Someone once asked me if you could be profitable in business today and still be ethical. How can you be profitable without being ethical, I wondered? When your values as an organization and a company are clear, ...