Dallas Real Estate and Short Sale Blog

The personal quality necessary to achieve outstanding success in business is that you must be willing to go the extra mile.

It’s the “Under Promise, Over Deliver” concept and “If you are always willing to do more than what you get paid for, the day will come when you will be paid for more than what you actually do.”

Robert Cialdini, in his book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, discusses what he calls the Law of Reciprocity. Basically it says that when you do something for someone else, there’s an unstated obligation for them to want to do something for you in return.

So when you go the extra mile for your customers or clients, you’ve just set the stage for that law to take effect. But it’s only on that “extra mile” that it works. When you give what might be considered “normal” service, or “adequate” service or even “good” service, you haven’t earned the right to expect that law to work for you.

In fact, even performing “knock-out” service often isn’t enough to gain you an advantage. We’ve all come to expect that from any number of businesses.

You’ve really got to do something special in order to gain an advantage in today’s highly competitive marketplace. Then, and only then, can you expect to create that nearly compelling desire in your customer to want to reciprocate. This simple truth says it all:

“There’s no traffic jam on the extra mile.”

Photo licensed from iStockPhoto

Source: http://www.thebranchteam.com/wordpress/2011/02/10/the-extra-mile/

It really is the client that signs your paycheck. And although you must see that your company's interests are always considered, you must not lose sight that the client is the boss.

They are the whole reason your job exists in the first place. They hire you to help them make good personal and business decisions. They trust you to help them see that their problems or needs are solved or satisfied in an efficient and cost effective manner, and they pay you well to do your job. It is the wants, needs and desires of your clients that should determine all of your business activity.

So the next logical step then, is to learn and understand just what your client's wants, needs and desires are. And you find that out simply by interviewing and asking them. It is very important to listen carefully to what they say because sometimes there may be other hidden or unstated wants or needs that may not be readily evident.

And only by fully understanding their needs can you be of meaningful service to them.

Based on Achieving Rock Star Status, Copyright 2010, Tom & Gina Branch | Photo licensed from iStockPhoto

It's been said that you can tell how professional a person is by the size of their income at the end of the year.

And you can tell exactly how valuable the service you perform is by how much people are willing to pay you for it. If you do the same job that everybody else does, and do it no better than the way they do it, you can't expect to earn more money or be considered any more valuable than those other people.

You see, the market, by nature, will pay superior rewards only for superior goods and services. It will pay average rewards for average goods and services, and it will see that inferior rewards are paid for inferior goods and services.

In other words, you will be rewarded in direct proportion to the value you provide your customers. It's inescapable. That's the law of nature.

Now, if the products and services you sell or provide are similar in coverage and price to everyone else's (and most of them are), then the difference between you and other people in your position has to be in the type and amount of personal service you provide your customers and clients.

This then has to be the area you excel in - it becomes your competitive edge.

Based on Achieving Rock Star Status, Copyright 2010, Tom & Gina Branch | Photo licensed from iStockPhoto

The more you serve your customers and help them satisfy their needs, the more you will prosper.
 
And as a business owner, business manager, professional person or entrepreneur, serving your customers' needs effectively means that you must do the things that unsuccessful business owners, managers, professionals, and entrepreneurs don't do. The things that those unsuccessful people don't do are the things that most of us don't like to do either.

There is no doubt that it is difficult to work long hours or on weekends when your family is waiting for you at home, to have only a couple of "shoppers" stop by or to be stood up for an appointment someone made with you.
 
It's tough to make telephone calls only to be met with hostile and rude people on the other end who curse at you or slam the phone down.
 
It's discouraging to set goals, schedule interviews, explain the technical aspects and benefits of the products and services you provide, overcome customers' objections and misconceptions, and go out of your way to give exceptional service, only to have your customer go elsewhere because they found the same product or service for a few dollars less.
 
Enough of these experiences can be discouraging for anyone. And after a while, some people just quit trying. They find it easier to adjust their standard of living downward to match their income, than to adjust their income upward to create their desired standard of living.

They are no longer in control. Inflation dictates the price of things they buy, and competition and luck determine how much they have to spend. Fortunately for them, many of their competitors are in the same situation.

Outstanding success is unusual and is dependent on many different factors. For some people, it just happens. They're in the right place at the right time, they do nothing special, everything just falls into place for them. Others put in long hours and much work only to find average success.

http://www.thebranchteam.com/wordpress/2010/10/16/what-failures-don%e2%80%99t-like-to-do/

Some time back a friend of ours had the pleasant opportunity of having dinner with his friend Earl Nightingale, the famous radio personality and producer of self improvement cassette programs.

Earl made his life's work studying successful people and how they achieved their successes. Our friend had long admired Earl for his ideas and philosophy.

And on that occasion, our friend asked him what advice he would give his young son if he had one. What, based on his vast experience and knowledge, would be the one thing that would help his son ensure success both in business as well as in his personal life.

Earl said to our friend, "You know, I have often thought about that very question. And after all the years and all the study, I've come to the conclusion that your success in life, or in business for that matter, can be boiled down to one thing. That is, your rewards will always be in direct proportion to the amount of service you render.

"You only have to look around," he said. "The people who serve others, prosper. The people who don't serve others, don't prosper. And you can tell just how successful a person is by the amount of service they render to others.

"The problem," he continued, "is that unsuccessful people either haven't learned that great secret, or they don't apply it."

"The success­ful people are the ones who develop the habits of doing the things that unsuccessful people don't do for one reason or another."