197,509 words.
If you’ve been reading the Tuesday Tidbits regularly over the past couple of years, then you’ve ingested over four business books worth of information, all in no more than five minutes per week.
Last week, out of curiosity, I checked the stats on the Tuesday Tidbits and discovered that I’d written 197,509 words over the past couple of years. That’s not including dozens of articles, interviews, guest posts, whitepapers, and two commercially published books (adding 120,000 extra words to the mix).
That’s a lot of words! But aside from all those words, there’s (of course!) a powerful lesson to be learned if you’ve been reading them and taking action.
Let me explain.
At the first Evergreen Summit last year (there are only eight spots left to join us this year), I introduced a powerful and yet simple process called the Pick-3 Process. When I start working with clients, the Pick-3 is often one of the first things I propose they do and within days they always love it.
The reason clients love it is because they start seeing results literally the same day. And that’s not some hyped-up marketing claim (it still requires work!); but they start seeing results the very first time they use it – It’s that powerful!
The way the Pick-3 works is quite simple. Each day we have people complete a simple, customer-focused tasks specifically designed to help foster, nurture, and cultivate deeper and more meaningful relationships with their current customers. The results are tracked, measured, and monitored giving us tons of useful and valuable customer data.
But fostering and nurturing relationships is often hard to measure from an (ROI) point of view. Yet the Pick-3 is also an incredibly powerful tool for increasing profits and driving predictable revenue growth through simple tasks that can be carried out by anyone and everyone.
The Pick-3 is the perfect tool because it takes all the mystery out of customer follow-up and customer retention efforts. So in some companies where we’ve introduced the tool, we take a company that’s put practically zero focus on customer retention, and we instantly propel them to being engaged in world-class retention/loyalty efforts with almost zero training involved.
But here’s the best part. Your results compound day after day, week after week, and month after month. You leave your competition in the dust because they’re not even thinking about the type of thing that you’re doing. This is exactly the type of simple but powerful process that my clients love.
So what’s this have to do with the 198K words Tuesday Tidbits?
Well, consider this.
If you’ve consistently read the Tuesday Tidbits, then the cumulative impact on your thinking has likely been pretty huge.
But if you’ve engaged in the weekly challenges (even just a few of them), then it’s the small yet consistent actions that have propelled you to ask different questions, to try new things, to develop new systems, to find the inefficiencies in sales/marketing/customer follow-up, to implement new processes, and push your people to serve your customers better.
That’s the key lesson here. That’s always been the key lesson.
It’s the small but consistent actions that matter.
Here’s the thing.
I’m asking for five minutes of your most valuable resource each week to read my free newsletter. That’s great, and if you don’t get value from it, you’re always welcome to unsubscribe. But before you do, you should see what happens when you apply five minutes each day to completing three Evergreen-related, customer-focused tasks, or completing the weekly Tidbit challenge.
That’s where the real magic happens.
Here’s your key challenge for this week.
Complete one of these tasks today. Then do the other one tomorrow.
Pick up the phone and call three lost or inactive customers. Seriously. Just try it. Tell them they’ve been missed. Figure out why they left if you don’t already know. Ask them what you can do to gain their business back.
Or
Pick three clients that have been significant to you and your company this year and send them something with a personal touch. “Thanks for being a customer.” “Thanks for your recent purchase.” Congratulations on a fantastic project!” Let them know they’re important to you and that you value their business.
This is just a small sample of the type of simple, consistent, daily activity that I’m talking about. Your clients and customers will be amazed and will thank you for it.
