Tuesday, August 26, 2008 Tabije: Gratitude in business By Maeng Tabije Tuesday Notions
STUDIES have shown that a healthy sense of gratitude is what most successful people have.
Gratitude is something that we all need to cultivate in our personal and business life. Unwritten laws of human nature say that people who show sincere gratitude in their daily lives are the happier and more successful people.
For one thing, when you have a natural tendency to be thankful, your instinct is to look at your blessings instead of your problems. Who doesn't have problems anyway? Not Bill Gates, not Donald Trump, not Henry Sy, not you and me. Worrying about your problems doesn't make them go away.
When you have a happy disposition brought about by your sense of gratitude, you have less stress, you enjoy life more and you are more efficient in your job. The bottom line? More success.
How do you introduce a culture of gratitude in your business?
You and your employees should never ever forget to say "thank you" to your prospects and customers.
If you are selling computers or cards or motorbikes or appliances or bicycles or similar high-priced products, get the address of your buyers and send them a nice thank you note after one week. Write in the note the name and phone of your customer service staff that they could call in case they have problems with the product they bought.
On your company's anniversary celebration, send your most valued customers a thank you note. Of course, if you can attach a simple inexpensive but sincere gift, a shirt, cap, ballpen, diary, memo pad case, etc, it would even be more meaningful. Of course, you are free to print your company name on them for added advertising. You can also do this on the birthdays of your customers.
If you just met a prospective client, send him a mail, email or text afterwards thanking him for the time he spent with you. When you send him a formal proposal for your product or service, send him another thank you note after one week for his time and consideration. If you finally close the deal, send an appropriate thank you note.
Want to really impress your client with your sense of gratitude? Secretly find out his personal favorites and send him one of those on special occasions. This could be a certain brand of pen, shirt, perfume, cologne, beauty products or belt--anything that strikes his fancy.
In these times of too many emails in our inboxes and too many text messages in our cell phones, the most memorable and effective thank you notes are the ones you write by hand and send by "snail mail." They are now definitely more unique and sound more sincere.
Do you want to develop a habit of gratitude? Try the "I really enjoy" exercises.
While taking your coffee say to yourself, "I really enjoy my coffee because if perks me up." After a meeting with your colleagues where you discussed many problems and solutions say to yourself, "I really enjoy these meetings because we are able to solve problems and move forward". And so on.
Go ahead, try it. You'll be surprised.
Note: I have changed the name of this column to "Tuesday Notions" as many of my readers from all over, some email feedbacks come from far away Australia, Europe, US and Africa; they read the Sun.Star online version -- have been asking what day of the week it regularly comes out. The new name now makes it more obvious.
(Ismael D. Tabije, MBM, also publishes the website BestManagementArticles.com. Visit the site for thousands of fresh management articles. Email comments to: idtabije@gmail.com.)
