How to exceed high expectations in today's business world

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In today's curt and competitive business world, hard work and excellent service are expected. Arriving early and leaving late won't set you apart. Neither will being attentive to a client's or customer's needs. While these traits will indeed help you keep your job and customers, they won't help you move up or expand your business. To do that you need to exceed today's high expectations.

I know: you're already working sixty hours a week and treating your clients like royalty, so you're wondering what more you could do. I suggest you focus, not on trying to redouble your already superhuman initial efforts, but on improving your follow-up. Because everyone today is working so hard on providing initial quality and service there has been a falloff in follow-up. So much time and effort is going toward actually doing the work in the first place that there's no time for second efforts. That provides you with an opportunity to show how much more caring you are than everyone else, and as a result, how much more you deserve their trust.

After you've provided your service or done your job, check to see if there are any further questions or needs. This can be done with a telephone call or even an E-mail message. Follow up to see if, for instance, your report arrived on time, and after checking on delivery, ask if it raised any new issues. After selling a product, check back a week later to see how the customer likes their purchase, and to find out if they have any questions. If finding the time for such efforts is a problem, consider making it a part of your evening or weekend schedule. Actually getting to speak with the other person isn't as important in this instance as demonstrating that you're willing to go the extra mile. Leaving a message on an after-hours answering machine or sending a weekend E-mail that's not read until Monday will serve just as well as a Wednesday afternoon telephone conversation.

That's how Jeremy Marquette managed it. A thirty-four-year-old tax and small business accountant. He had been able to bring a core of clients along with him to his new business two years ago, when he left the medium-size suburban firm he'd joined fresh out of college. But he hadn't been able to expand that client list. Even though he asked all his existing clients to refer him to others, it didn't seem to be working. After we analyzed his business and his techniques, Jeremy realized that, while he was good at what he did and provided excellent service, so did dozens of other sole practitioners in his area. Every CPA worth his calculator was sending out newsletters and speaking at Lions Club luncheons. Jeremy needed to do something to set himself apart. He decided to devote one hour every Saturday morning to follow-up. If he and a client usually communicated by E-mail, Jeremy would dash off a quick weekly follow-up note and send it along. If he and a client usually spoke on the telephone, he'd leave a short voice mail message, saying that he was just calling to check in and see if there were any problems. The messages actually generated very little direct feedback. After all, if clients had problems they would have called. Still, that wasn't his intent. It took about four months, but Jeremy began to notice an increase in the number of referrals he was getting. When he asked the new clients what led them to his office, the reply was almost always some variation of: "I heard that you really cared about your clients." As a result, Jeremy was now someone special; someone deserving of trust.

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