Organizational Excellence - Book Summary: "Customers for Keeps", by Lois K. Geller - News: JFD Performance Solutions

Customers for Keeps. 8 Powerful Strategies to Turn Customers into Friends and Keep Them Forever is a very comprehensive book that compares customers to your friends, and how relating to customers as you would a good friend can result in more new and repeat business for your company. Companies must be more customer oriented than ever, and Geller urges us to use "friendship branding" to think about our company in a human way; and to create a warm emotional bond with our customers.

Stage One: Putting a Human Face on Your Company
As buyers and consumers, it's hard to make a human connection with most brands and companies. The more your can company can "speak" to your customers on a level that works for them, the more will want to do business with you.

By changing how you think about your tasks, you can create a better return on investment for your time. Do you have more 'to-dos' than time in your day? Is lack of time preventing you from reaching more of your goals? If you had more time, what would it mean to your business, your finances, your family - your life? No one is given more than 24 hours a day. How then do some people accomplish so much while others drown in incomplete 'to-do' lists, missed deadlines and unmet objectives?

The year was 2006. In April, my father died of prostate cancer after a very tough struggle, and I was having difficulty dealing with him being gone. He was only 70 years old. A month earlier, in March, Mildred, my favorite great-aunt, had also passed away. She was almost 94. As executor of Aunt Mildred's will and estate, I appreciated her trust in bestowing that responsibility upon me, but it was a tremendous amount of extra work for me to take on, especially while grieving for her and for Dad.

A month into the New Year already. Are you rolling? Are you on your way to making 2010 truly better than 2009?

The start of a new year is always a great time to reflect back and plan forward. Here are some great questions to springboard that thinking. Remember, you're more likely to achieve something if you plan for it and write it down, so ... get your pens ready! Here goes:

It seems as though every business-related book, blog or speech these days is titled to emphasize the unique economic times that we are experiencing. Titles like: "Selling When the Economy Stinks", "Finding a Job in Turbulent Times", "Marketing in an Upside-Down World", and even "Leading in a Piggly-Wiggly World" (aha, you caught me). Yet these are, of course, special and trying times...I certainly understand and appreciate that. And there are different business methods and actions that are more appropriate now than, say, three or four years ago when the economy was riding high. On the other hand, an awful lot of what is effective and relevant these days also works in any economic environment.