Bury Your Ego
by Keith Lee
I recently invested in myself and my company by attending a Glazer Kennedy Inner Circle event. While there, I went to lunch at an independent fast food style Mexican restaurant. The food was so good, I ate there 2 of the 4 days I was at the event.
While I was waiting for my order, a lady came up and said, “I ordered beans and got rice instead.” The clerk replied, “You ordered #1 with rice and salad, and two #3s beans and rice.” The lady replied, “Well, I wanted beans.” To which the clerk said, “I can give you a side of beans.”
In this exchange, it was obvious the cost of the beans was totally irrelevant – it was a tiny cup of refried beans for crying out loud! The clerk’s EGO was the issue. Why did she need to tell the client that she was wrong?… EGO.
A more timid client would have likely turned around without reiterating that she wanted beans, ate, left, and never come back. Who knows, in fact this client may not come back after being “put in her place” by the clerk. Remember, 68% of clients who leave one business and take their business somewhere else do so because they were treated with indifference.
There is a huge chance that this client will go somewhere else after being treated rudely. Anyone who works with your clients needs to be trained to put their ego aside. In this case, just say, “Oh, I’m sorry, let me get you a side of beans.” No EGO, no “putting someone in their place”, no chance for an upset client, no blame, just fix the problem. Most client problems are just this simple. It just doesn’t matter. And it sure as heck is not worth embarrassing a client or making a client look bad.
So what was I doing at the Glazer Kennedy Inner Circle Event I talked about at the beginning of this article? I was practicing the quotation from Jim Rohn, “Rich People Have Big Libraries, Poor People Have Big TVs.” Let me tell you how true that was for me at this event, and how true it can be for you when you spend your time and money increasing the size of your library.
While attending the seminar itself didn’t physically increase the size of my library, just attending the event and taking notes was a huge addition to my Mental Library and extensive library of notes and ideas. The tuition for this conference was $1497. Airfare, hotel, and food added well over $1000 to the cost. So my total investment for the conference was at least $2,500 plus a few days away from work.
One of the many incredibly exciting results of these three days happened at breakfast the first morning. I ran into a guy I had met at a previous conference so we had breakfast together. While talking with him at breakfast, before the conference even began, I got one idea that returned me at least 10 times the $2500 investment I made to go to the conference.
This newsletter is an example of investing in your library. The act of reading this blog post alone shows your team members that you are serious about client service.
I suggest you share this, “Bury Your Ego”, article with your team. It’s likely that teaching your team to do something to stop just one customer from leaving you and going to your competition will pay you big dividends.
If you want to find more great tips like these, then click the link below to request my free book The Happy Customer Handbook. It’s chock full of secrets to creating happy clients who come back time and time again. Not only that, they tell others about you. Just click the link below to get the hard copy delivered to your front door:
