One Hudson Valley Company sends this card with its mail orders. “Please complain. Thank you for your order! We want everything to go perfectly. If the order was late, or wrong, or any of the goods are damaged in the slightest, or you’re just having a lousy day and want to unload on someone, call our customer care hot line.”

A car wash owner invariably walks up to a complaining customer, looks him up and down and as the owner’s face turns an apoplectic, beet-red screams at the top of his lungs, “Waddya want…a $100- Simonize job for eight bucks? Now…get outta here and don’t come back!” If the customer threatens to tell his friends of mistreatment, the owner yells, “Go ahead. They’re probably jerks just like you!”

Make it your mission to satisfy your customers, and the profits will take care of themselves. Find out what your customer needs, then deliver it. Don’t worry about how much money you can make on the sale; the bottom line will take care of itself.

Find out whether a customer who is shopping for a German shepherd has time to train a puppy or would be better with an older, housebroken dog. Breeders that care only about profits often advertise low prices, and sell dogs with genetic defects or illnesses. You can multiply your sales by following the second rule: Offer content and low cost, not low price.

In every transaction, remember what it costs your customer to do business with you. If someone buys a poorly bred dog that needs veterinary treatments, the customer’s cost is both financial and emotional. At a higher price, a better-bred dog will cost less. Rather than cutting you price; educate your customer about how much less it will cost them to do business with you.

Don’t be like our car wash owner. Satisfy the customer, no matter what it takes. A happy customer will come back to you.

“But a customer who buys a healthy dog from a reputable breeder isn’t going to need another one for several years” you say. Success also depends on the fourth principle: Shorten the trading cycle! The new dog owner will remain a profitable customer if you offer training lessons and grooming.

Hudson Valley organizations that follow these four principles…sell customer needs, guarantee satisfaction, add more content and have low cost rather than low price and shorten the trading cycle can succeed in any business…whether you’re breeding dogs, writing software, making furniture, managing investment portfolios, selling mail order gift baskets, or washing cars.

The sad truth is that most businesses do not follow the four principles that lead to superior customer service. These people relentlessly pursue the gross profit agenda. If there’s a range of products to be sold, they ask, “Which one carries the highest profit margin?”

Realize that you can replace the self-defeating tactics of the gross profit business agenda with the customer satisfaction business agenda by selling a lot of product, and not worrying about making a large gross profit on each item you sell. Make people happy, no matter what it costs, so they will do business with you again. Shorten the trading cycle. Get people to buy from you more often.

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