The following is a guest post by Robert Tuchman.
Service is more than just putting your hand out for a handshake. It’s making sure your customer will shake hands again and will introduce you to the other people to shake hands with. It is not something that needs to be obtained on an intellectual level, but also as part of your physical and emotional make up, that your business is really about relationships. That realization must support your organizations service philosophy.
At Premiere Global Sports we sell experiences. We deliver our clients unique experiences, or once-in-a-lifetime trips, to top-level events like the Super Bowl, the Masters, and the World Series. Our clients expect the highest experiences, and we do out best to make absolutely sure they get that service before, during, and after the event. But the service we deliver is part of the experience as well. After all, the experience of working with us starts long before people show up at the Super Bowl!
Starting TSE Sports & Entertainment, and eventually selling my company to Premiere Global Sports, I built the company on the foundation of my sports knowledge as well as business knowledge. But the most important thing to remember about service while juggling the other aspects of your company is the level of commitment and keeping your clients happy while providing ongoing exceptional service. The commitment is what closes the deal in the first place, what keeps those faithful customers coming back for more. It’s what helps you spot difficult problems, bounce back, and repair the relationship when there is a problem. And it’s what gets you happy clients to refer to others to you. If the service you deliver is lousy, none of those things will happen.
Most clients need to know that you are thinking about their business as much as they are. If they don’t hear from you on a regular basis no matter how much time and effort you are putting in on their behalf, they are going to assume that you’ve stopped thinking about them and stopped working for them. So just remember especially in the first year of providing service for your new company; servicing the client, supporting the relationship, thinking like the client have to be your number one priority in your business. If you want your business to make it past the one-year mark, you have to make your client relationships your primary concern.
Robert Tuchman is the author of Young Guns: The Fearless Entrepreneur’s Guide to Chasing Your Dreams and Breaking Out on Your Own. He founded TSE Sports & Entertainment in his one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan at the age of 25.