Please and Thank You - The "Magic Words" (Magic Words is Business as Well)

It always amazes me how powerful the lessons of our youth can be when we remember to apply them in business. My mother always told me that "please and thank you" were "magical words".  While I never doubted my Mother, it took me awhile to understand the "magic" part.

You see the magic when you take the time to thank your employees for the big and the small things they do every day.  You see the magic when you write a hand written (a lost art these days - emails don't count) thank-you note to a colleague or a customer thanking them (no matter what the business outcome) for their time. You see the magic when we take the time in our busy lives say thank you to the multitude of people and family who help us each day. 

I recently was helping someone who was in the stone monument and memorial business.  I asked her what's your "secret sauce" how do you differentiate yourself from the competition.  She said "we all provide the same services, we all get our stone from the same quarries and use many of the same vendors and our pricing models are similar".  She went on to say, though, that, "they don't do some of the little things that well though, like taking the time to say a personnel thank you to suppliers, vendors, and even to the customers you don't get".  I thought wow, there's someone who gets it!

It also proves what we all know - that Mother was always right!

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