Baby it's cold outside

Some days like this, when you wake up when it's still dark outside - and have been doing so for about 3 months, it feels like winter is never going to end.

Well there is hope, because the tulips have been blooming in our yard for about a week now.

New blog worth checking out: Howard Mann posted some food for thought today, based on a dentist who started working half the time for 3 times the money:

"Customers enjoy dealing with businesses where the team members are happy. Where they speak affectionately about each other and their clients. Where they don’t complain about pay and conditions. Customers (don’t) buy because the product is better or cheaper, but (because of the) people in the business."

That is only one of the posts that makes this new blog worth checking out.

I think that the grass roots/blogging/internet movement in sales/customer service/business has to do primarily with boosting three things: Integrity, Creativity and Treating your Customers like Human Beings.

Now, big business has been trying all along to convince us of it's integrity but, like I said before, We don't buy into what they tell us just because they say it's true. Because big business has failed time and time again to demonstrate real integrity, they have alienated the customer -and thus the mighty marketing machine has failed.

Creativity has of course always been frowned upon, businesses still to this day want every employee to demonstrate a robot-like countenance in the name of consistent branding.

Customers? Well they've been valued only as much as the money in their hot little hands, and as much as business has prostituted itself in the name of attracting customers, it has never fully tried to understand them or care about them. As a result, the customer does not care about the company, making brand loyalty ever- elusive.

Business seems to KNOW that something is up, but just can't fathom how simple it is to be a part of this because they don't know how to tell the truth.

Don't believe me? check out the new fake blog from everybody's favorite burger joint.

*shaking head in disdain*
'Nuff said :)