A lot of marketers tend to forget the fact that we’re in the customer business. I’m re-reading Robert Allen’s bestseller “Multiple Streams of Internet Income” right now and he makes this point very blatantly:

“After you find your hungry school of fish, you must resist the almost universal attitude to focus on selling products. As a businessperson, your ultimate product is a satisfied customer.”

Robert includes 2 great quotes about this. I’ll give you bits of each of them. The first is from an article in the ‘Harvard Business Review’ titled “Marketing Myopia.” The kicker is that this was written in 1975 by Theodore Levitt and you’ll realize that most compaines have still not learned this lesson.

The article was showing how the railroad industry thought they were in the railroad business (product centered) when in fact they were in the transportation business (customer centered). This proved to be a fatal flaw which almost wiped them out because they didn’t regard the invention of the airplane as being important. The movie industry did this when television came along also. Levitt says this continues to occur because:

“…The entire corporation must be viewed as a customer-creating and customer-satisfying organism. Management must think of itself not as producing products but as providing customer-creating value satisfactions. It must push this idea (and everything it means and requires) into every nook and cranny of the organization…In short, the organization must learn to think of itself not as producing goods or services but as ‘buying customers,’ as doing the things that will make people ‘want’ to do business with it.”

Well, that’s offline. Online this is even more true! Here’s what Jeff Bezos, the CEO of amazon.com said in the May 31, 1999 issue of ‘Business Week:’

“We want to be the world’s most consumer-centric company… We focus incesantly on trying to get the customer experience right …See, we’re not a book company. We’re not a music company. We’re not a video company. We’re not an auctions company. We’re a customer company.”

Look , if it works for amazon.com, guess what, it won’t be half bad for your business. Especially now. If you pay attention to the companies and products that are hot these days they cater to their customers being able to customize the products or the features of the products. Kids today are growing up in a “Have it YOUR way” culture that Burger King could only imagine when they invented that slogan.

It’s been proven time and again that it’s incredibly easier to sell to one of your happy customers than it is to sell to a person who has no experience with you. I don’t remember the exact statistic, but it’s something like 80% of people surveyed said that they would buy again (here’s the key -) if they were asked to do so (you have to ask) by a company that gave them a positive buying experience.

Most companies are ultra-focused on spending time and money on bringing in new customers. Because of this, most current customers are neglected. If you’re one of the few taking advantage of this by taking care of your customers then you’ll build a much stronger business with much less effort than most companies.

Honor and cherish people who buy from you. Give your customers the world because if you do they’ll come back over and over and over again. Even better, they’ll tell their friends to buy from you because you give great service in a time when very few companies do.

You’ve probably read and heard multiple times that “your list is your gold.” This is true and focusing on your list building and list satisfying is what will bring you that gold. It’s all about building trust and relationships which is why you’ve probably also heard that “the fortune’s in the follow-up,” which it definitely is.

So here are the points I’d like you to take away form this article and use to your advantage:

– Always remember that you’re in the customer business, not the product business no matter what you sell.

– While you’re building your opt-in list don’t forget to build trust and solid relationships with your subscribers by giving them TONS of value and everything free that can help them get what they want. Also be human and vulnerable. We all like people who show their hearts.

– Never sacrifice the trust of your list for anything. For example, give them more valuable content than ads (don’t just sell to them). For another example, don’t sell their e-mail addresses when they never agreed to you sharing their information.

I think you deserve to make people’s wallets fly open, don’t you? Just treat ’em right, overdeliver on your customer service and ask ’em to come back. If you ask nicely, I bet they will!

Sopan Greene, M.A. is a 15 year marketing professional & editor of Net Profits. Get 3 FREE eBooks & a FREE report: “Born To Win,” “Million Dollar Emails”,”How To Start Your Own Traffic Virus” & “The 13 Deadly Internet Marketing Mistakes Almost Every Business Is Making…” webmaster87-5956@autocontactor.com