You Haven't Hit Your Peak Yet! by Harvey Mackay

Author:Harvey Mackay
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781119658658
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2019-12-16T16:00:00+00:00

It’s important to decide early on how you will conduct yourself. Then, when a crisis erupts or challenge arises, you won’t have to think twice about the right thing to do. I’ve always said that perfect practice makes perfect. These rules are no exception. And just for the record, these commandments work outside the office too.

Mackay’s Moral

Some rules are made not to be broken.

Bad manners are bad for business

If your mother was anything like my mother, good manners was her middle name. Please and thank you were just the beginning, followed by respect, tact, patience, consideration, and all the other forms of etiquette so important in a civilized world.

Today, I consider myself incredibly fortunate that she and my dad took such pains to impart such values to my sister and me.

Good manners are never out of style or out of date, although lately, I’m seeing less and less of them. My theory is that as business in general becomes more impersonal, people become less concerned with the long-term ramifications of their actions.

In other words, you can now do business by phone, Internet, email, or fax and be essentially anonymous. You’ve probably been put on hold, paced through a phone menu, pressed every button, transferred to several incorrect departments, and nobody but the machine knows or even cares. There’s little pressure to be polite, just businesslike and efficient. Sadly, it soon becomes the rule rather than the exception. Sooner or later, you have no other choice than to put up with it.

As customers do business farther away from home, the likelihood that your next door neighbor is also your banker or grocer or school principal lessens. We lose some of the sense of community that helps us behave civilly even when we are disappointed.

Customer loyalty is at an all-time low. Consumers are shopping wherever and whenever it’s convenient, in part because the same products are available at many outlets, but also because the stores aren’t enticing them to come back. They can zip over to the net any time. Could it be we’re not getting the kind of treatment we want?

My favorite example is the telemarketer who calls at a time most likely to interrupt your dinner, hawking a product that precious few people are likely to buy over the phone. How many of you have actually bought insurance/phone service/mortgages/credit cards or similar offerings from an unknown faceless solicitor who doesn’t have the decency to ask if you’re busy? Is this what business has become?

Well, business may have changed, but people haven’t. They still have feelings, and they’d like a little consideration. The best part is that it’s sooooo easy to do. (And free!)

I’d like to start a campaign to return good manners to business. I’d like the folks on the other side of the cash register or order book to see me as more than just another account. I don’t necessarily want to get personal—I just want to be a person. I’d like to leave the transaction feeling like a valued customer who is worth their best behavior.

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