A minute later, after the cashiers rang up the order, they asked again, but slightly differently. The cashiers said something along the lines of “Would you like to round up your purchase to the nearest dollar and donate the extra change to the Boys and Girls Club?” Many people who had said “no” now said “yes.”

What created the power of persuasion? Why were so many customers saying “no” to a $1 donation and then donating when asked again a couple minutes later? It wasn’t the ease of tossing their change into a bucket, because most people were paying with credit cards.   And the store was in a very wealthy suburb, so although the difference between $1 and 20 cents was a large percentage, it probably wasn’t meaningful to the donors.

Robert Cialdini, a professor of marketing and psychology, has a section in his fantastic book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, that explains why the H&M customers’ behavior my wife witnessed isn’t a fluke. It’s actually predictable.

In one research experiment, Cialdini’s team approached college students and claimed to be from the County Youth Counseling Program. The team members asked the students to chaperone troubled kids on a trip to the zoo; 83% refused. In the next phase of the experiment, Cialdini was able to dramatically shift results with one change. Prior to asking students to volunteer as chaperones, his team asked them to mentor a troubled kid for two hours a week for at least two years. After the students declined, the researchers asked if they would chaperone the single trip. Three times as many students agreed to chaperone when asked as a follow-up than did similar students who were asked only about chaperoning.

More backup is a study conducted by social psychologists at UCLA and related to negotiation. (This study, also mentioned in Cialdini’s book, was performed by Benton, Kelley and Liebling.) They found that the negotiators who got the most from another party started with an offer that was a bit extreme and then conceded to something more reasonable. They were able to close more deals than negotiators who started with the exact same reasonable deal but wouldn’t concede anything. When the offer was exactly the same, a significantly higher percentage of people accepted when it was a concession rather than the first offer.

According to the researchers, here’s what’s happening:

1. Psychologists say that the rule of reciprocity makes most of us want to do something for people who do something for us first. When people make a second request that’s smaller than the first, we consider their concession (asking for less) as doing something for us. That’s why, like H&M customers, student volunteers, and negotiators, we would say “yes” to the second request when we wouldn’t agree to it if it had been the only request.
2. If the first ask is a big commitment, the second request made right afterwards seems small in comparison.

Many people, after asking for something and getting a “no,” simply try to redirect. They ask why not, try to overcome hurdles, and then if that fails, vow to find a new approach. If your pitch doesn’t work, you should definitely try those tactics. But if they fail, ask for something smaller and different. Have a backup pitch. If you’re asking someone to donate $100 to your charity and he says no, follow up by asking if he’d buy a $10 raffle ticket. If you’re trying to get someone to join your Board of Directors and she says no, ask if you can call her for advice once in a while.

Before reading Cialdini’s book, I understood that it’s easier to close a deal when you make a concession. I hadn’t realized that making a concession would get people to say “yes” to things they would normally refuse.

If you’re interested in learning more about the power of persuasion, check out Robert Cialdini’s book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.

Many companies have a standard practice of having exit interviews with departing employees. Too many companies don’t have a standard practice of having stay interviews with the employees they want to retain.

A stay interview isn’t a 1:1 meeting or a check-in meeting. Its purpose isn’t to talk about current projects. These are meetings focused on retention. There are several parts to a successful stay interview:

1. The best way to find out what your employees want and how to retain them is to ask them.Ask questions to gauge how you’re meeting your employees’ expectations. Not just “How’s it going?”, but specific questions to get specific answers. Some questions to ask: How are things going? What makes you stay? What would make you stay longer? How can I help you with your professional goals? Are there new things you’d like to try? Are there things I can do better, as your manager? Are there things you aren’t getting out of this job that you’d like to get out of the job? What do you love doing? What would you like to be doing more of?By the way, the only way this works is if you’re committed not only to asking the questions but also to listening to the answers and responding to them with more than words. If you can’t do that, it’s probably better to skip the stay interviews. (Click here for advice about how to ask better questions.)
2. Provide feedback on their goals. Let employees know what’s realistic, and think about the next steps together. Appropriate expectation setting is critical to retention. Develop a plan, which should be more than a discussion. You don’t need to create the plan, but you should participate in shaping it.
3. Understand their personal goals and what’s going on outside work. If an employee is getting married, having a baby, or sending a kid to college, you should know about it. I’m not advocating becoming friends with the people you manage. But you should be interested in their lives and know what’s going on. I loved managers who were interested in me. Also, what better way to appreciate your top performers than by knowing about their lives and finding opportunities (if  you’re lucky) to contribute to them?
4. This is an ongoing conversation. I think it’s worth having a stay interview quarterly or twice a year if you can. Why not see if you can substitute stay interviews today for an exit interview down the line?

I used to call these check-in meetings. Kevin Kruse gave me the idea to call them stay interviews. His newest book, Employee Engagement 2.0: How to Motivate Your Team for High Performance (A Real-World Guide for Busy Managers), talks about stay interviews as well as other ways to engage your employees to help with employee retention. This book is a quick read and worth checking out.

I think stay interviews are one of the many things we should be doing to retain talent. What do you think? What are other ways to retain great talent?

Although the type of job Mia wanted was low- (or no-) paying, it would’ve been extremely difficult to find a restaurant willing to take her on with no experience. Yet, shortly after beginning her search, she landed an apprenticeship at Le Bec Fin, which was considered one of the best restaurants in the country.

How did this happen? Mia shared her goals with everyone she met. It turns out that her grandfather’s neighbor had a cousin who was the White House pastry sous chef. A conversation with her grandfather led to a conversation with his neighbor, which led to a conversation with his cousin.  Turns out, the White House chef knew someone at a restaurant in Philadelphia, and that led to Mia’s apprenticeship.

There is one essential way to get people to help you achieve your goals. Whether your goal is huge, like starting a nonprofit to help change people’s lives, or something smaller, like getting more traffic to your blog, most people want to help. What you have to do is share your goal. If you’re not comfortable asking for help, you can mention what you’re trying to do and wait for people to raise their hands. They will.

And tell everyone. Keep in mind that most of your friends know the same people you know. So it’s important to share your goal with strangers you meet (at parties, events, etc.) and with acquaintances who aren’t in the same social circles. Who would’ve predicted that the path to Mia’s apprenticeship in Philadelphia would be through her grandfather’s neighborhood in Washington, DC?

This approach has been helpful to me numerous times. Most recently, I was at a conference and shared over lunch that I was trying to find a publisher for my book. A woman immediately offered to introduce me to her book agent and later emailed me an introduction to a publishing company as well.

When you’re having conversations, and someone asks what’s going on, let them know what you’re trying to accomplish. Most people will want to help, and you never know who can help you achieve your goals.

For a great post about grandfathers, check out: 7 Easy Ways You Can be a Better Person — Advice from Grandpa. This was one of the two most popular posts on this blog.

But, before I get to that, please take no more than 30 seconds to answer this question: You’re at a construction site and you have plastic cups of water. What could you do with them? When you’re done, please continue reading below…

If you’re like me and most people, your answers are: drink the water, give water to construction workers, water the plants, throw the cups away and so on. Here are examples that most of us miss – the cups can be used to hold nails or rulers and pencils. You could use the cups to scoop out concrete mix into the small mixing pans. You could have a competition to see who can use mouth suction to keep a cup on their face the longest. If you decided to drink all the water, and there’s a long line for the Porta-John, you use the cups to . . .

Anyway, a lot could be done with cups. Heck some kids at a California Boys and Girls Club invented a game of stacking plastic cups in different formations as quickly as possible — known as sport stacking, cup stacking and speed stacking. It became a national craze complete with competitions, world records and millions of dollars in revenue for the companies that sold plastic “stacking cups.” A fine activity for lunch on a work site, and pretty fun, too – check out a little bit of the below video featuring a speed stacking world champion.

The point is to get us thinking outside of our assumptions. Asking about something that has an expected use, like cups, is a good way to start a brainstorming meeting. Typically, participants are asked to write down their answers and then a discussion follows. After that it’s good to follow-up with another question. Perhaps: What are the ways you can use a pen?

As people get into the spirit of things, you’ll get great answers like: you take it apart and use the barrel as a straw or blowgun. You can use it to breathe underwater (I wouldn’t advise trying that one. I have, and you can’t really get enough air). If you have two pens, you give one to a friend and recreate the epic battle between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader or put them in your mouth to look like a walrus. You can break the ink cartridge to create splatter art or take out the ink cartridge and break the pen with your hand to practice karate. It can be turned into a deadly weapon, helicopter (put a ruler on top), back scratcher, improvised finger splint, and so on.

The point is you get people to start looking at ordinary things differently, which will hopefully help the team get into the mindset of questioning our biases about how things should be done. Assumptions and the way we’ve done things tend to hold us back. They’re the natural way we think, so we need help breaking free of them.

As I mentioned in my post, How to Ask Better Questions, banks had inconvenient hours for decades. Then Commerce Bank asked an important question, “Why do banks operate the way we do?”

A cup doesn’t have to be for drinking, a bank doesn’t need to be like the rest of the banks and your business challenges don’t have to be solved the way they’ve always been solved.

When we start a new activity, we need to get our minds in gear. It’s not easy for me to jump from writing blog posts to looking at financial statements. I need to ease my mind into numbers. Instead of beginning a brainstorming by reviewing the problem, warm up your participants’ minds with questions that get them thinking differently. Or introduce other exercises that achieve the same goal. You’ll probably find that your output improves.

Do you have any suggestions for brainstorming meetings? By the way, what other uses can you think of for cups of water or a pen?

Me: What are you going to do when you get older?
Jack: Drink beer, drink coffee and touch the ceiling.

What can I say? He’s an ambitious kid with high aspirations and great role models. But that’s not the point of this post…

As demonstrated by our 2 year old, the questions you ask and how you ask them play a big role in the information you learn. I’m going to provide some suggestions for asking questions in a way that will allow you to be more successful at work.

1)    Only ask questions if you’re prepared to listen and respond. Too many people ask questions to elicit a specific, predetermined answer or so the questioner can feel like he’s checking off the box of “soliciting input.”

This is fine when it’s my wife asking me to pick between two carpet colors (or asking me about pretty much anything) and then deciding to do the opposite. However, it’s not ok at work or in most personal situations.

If you’ve made a decision and you’re not willing to change your mind, don’t ask for input just to get validation. Don’t ask a question because you think it makes you a good manager to solicit input.

2)    Respond. It’s ok to ask an opinion and not follow it, but you must be willing to consider what you hear. And, you must respond to what you hear. Make sure you explain why you will or won’t be taking particular suggestions. Otherwise you’ll hurt morale.

3)    How you ask the question determines the responses you receive. If you want to improve a presentation, ask, “What can we do to improve this presentation?” Most people are hesitant to give constructive suggestions (especially to their boss). By specifically asking for them, you’re giving yourself the best chance of receiving them. Someone who doesn’t really want feedback asks, “This is a great presentation, right?” They’ve setup the question to get a “yes.” If you just want feedback, leave the question as broad as possible: “What did you think of the presentation?”

4)    Don’t include assumptions or try to show your intelligence when asking a question. It narrows the question and the answer. For example, “Why aren’t we trying that?” is better than “Why aren’t we trying that — because of budget?” Narrowing the question often leads to less informative answers. (Of course, ignore this if you only want a quick answer.)

5)    Accept “I don’t know” as an answer. If people think they have to answer immediately, they’ll be less creative. They’ll be scrambling. Make it ok for people to say they’ll think about something and get back to you.

6)    Know when not to ask a question. If you want someone who reports to you or a family member to do something, and they don’t really have a choice, phrase your request as a statement. “Please write a status report” is better than “Would you mind writing a status report?”

7)    Question your assumptions. Go against conventional wisdom. Commerce Bank became a huge success, because they asked, “Why do banks operate the way they do?” Instead of following the model of every other bank, Commerce introduced weekend hours, late night hours and other policies that made them closer to Target or Starbucks than banks. It seems obvious now, but until Commerce, I can’t think of a big bank that offered this type of service.

8)    Ask questions to push a project forward. Not to put someone on the defensive. If you ask a lot of narrow questions in a row, your colleagues may think of you as a lawyer or a police officer rather than a teammate. “How’s the project going?” works better than the series: “Is the project on budget?”, “Is everyone doing their share of work?”, “Will you be finished on time?”, and so on. Start broad and then ask the specific questions if you don’t get the information you need.

9)    Don’t make your questions a drive by. We’re so used to saying, “How are you doing?” as “Hello,” that we ask it without even waiting for an answer. This happens with way too many other questions as well. The most important thing is to listen to the answer and, if appropriate, respond.

What should be number 10 on this list?

My grandfather died a few years ago. He taught me so much and was such a nice person that every year on his birthday, we try to do especially nice things for other people and eat at Wendy’s to celebrate his life. This year, I was so caught up in work related projects that I forgot it was his birthday. Fortunately, my wife remembered.

After dinner, she asked if we were ready for dessert. We all said yes, and then she pulled Frosty drinks out of the freezer. Her week had been as busy as mine. Yet, she had found the time to go out, pick up 6 Frostys and hide them in the freezer. It was awesome. Like the time I was sick and quarantined to a bathroom no one used. When I went in I found a towel folded up on the floor next to the toilet. . . so my knees wouldn’t hurt if I threw up. Probably more details than you needed, but I’ll never forget that thoughtfulness. I don’t need a big birthday party or a big Hanamus gift. The little things that matter every day are much more important. I’m trying to do a better job of slowing down and paying attention to those little things.

Do you want to show your appreciation for someone? Try slowing down. Pay attention to the little things. They are the big things.

What do you think?

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll probably like this wisdom from my grandfather: 7 Easy Ways You Can be a Better Person.

1)    Appreciate corporate sponsors. This is probably the easiest tip and the biggest missed opportunity. An example is Comcast’s blog a few days after Comcast Cares Day, a community service day for Comcast employees. The blog mentioned what employees did and where they volunteered. Not a single nonprofit that benefited from Comcast volunteers had posted a “thank you.”

Corporate sponsors love to be recognized for their contributions to the community, and they deserve this recognition. They make a huge difference in our programs and to the people we serve. Go to your sponsors’ blogs and Facebook pages and post thank you messages. Have your team, volunteers and the people you serve (if appropriate) do the same. Senior level people at corporations read their own blogs. And, let’s face it, there are many options sponsors have when choosing partner nonprofits. Let’s give them one more reason to choose you. (Also thank corporate partners on your own blog and Facebook page – most nonprofits do this part pretty well.)

2)    Wikipedia. Check out Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia comprised entirely of consumer generated and edited articles. As the 8^th highest trafficked site on the Internet, Wikipedia offers nonprofits a lot of visibility. If you don’t have a Wikipedia page for your nonprofit consider creating one. Here’s an example of a page for local Philadelphia nonprofit Project H.O.M.E.

If you’re part of a national organization coordinate with your national office, which may already have put this in place. A caveat is that since this is a consumer-edited encyclopedia, you’ll need to keep an eye on the page to ensure no one adds incorrect information.

3)    Reserve your name in all social media platforms. Just because you’re not yet using YouTube, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t own your YouTube Channel. Same for Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.

4)    Empower your supporters to fundraise online. You don’t even need your own social media presence for this. You can go to a third party like First Giving or Blackbaud and enable your supporters to fundraise online. Your supporters setup their own personal giving page (like this one), and then your supporters use their own social media networks to ask friends to donate. This is one of the few tactics that has actually generated significant money for nonprofits and where you can measure the positive ROI.

For this to work, it’s important to give your supporters specific suggestions. Tell them to include a personal story on their web page and provide them with an example of what that looks like. This increased results by about 50%. Also, remind supporters to share through email and social media.

Many nonprofits use this for events. You can also use it for non-event related peer-to-peer campaigns. For Spark the Wave, we do peer to peer asks once a year, and they’re not tied to an event. It works just as well and there are no event related expenses. (When friends contribute to each other’s nonprofits, they will probably donate whether or not there’s an event.)

5)    Focus on email. The drive to build an audience on Facebook, Twitter and social networks has often become the most important and visible “digital” ask by nonprofits. Even though this article is about social media for nonprofits, I want to remind you not to forget about email.

I’ve seen again and again that email gets a much higher response than Facebook or Twitter. Sending email to 100 constituents will get more people to read and respond to my content than posting my content in a Facebook or Twitter update that reaches the same 100 people. Facebook’s algorithm may decide my post isn’t important and push it down in the news feed. Or, if I post on a day when someone isn’t checking Facebook or Twitter my update could be buried underneath other updates by the time that person checks.

People also grow tired of social networks. I’ve heard from more and more people that they’ve moved from Twitter to Facebook or vice versa. Most people continue to be engaged with their personal email addresses. And, you can still encourage social sharing when you email by including buttons and links for your readers to share the content on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks. Posting to social media is definitely effective and you should build your social media relationships. However, don’t let it take precedence over email collection, which I believe should be your priority.

One caveat is to make sure this works for your audience – I’m Board Chair of Spark the Wave, a nonprofit that serves high school kids. We’ve found that our high schoolers prefer text messaging and Facebook and rarely use email, so in that case email collection is much less valuable.

6)    Use social media internally. Social media is a great way to tap into internal expertise. This works especially well if you’re a nonprofit that’s part of a national network. Social media can be a way to share best practices, get advice, see who can help with various projects, and so on. You can use a closed group on LinkedIn a Facebook group or an internal social media platform like Yammer (which has a free version). The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia has so many employees that they use a twitter account to keep everyone updated on what’s going on.

7)    Social media can provide volunteer support. I’ve noticed that users of the Big Brothers Big Sisters LinkedIn Group are often volunteers seeking advice related to their mentoring relationships. There’s a nice support system that has sprung up to address this. Volunteers provide each other with advice and our staff provides suggestions as well. Perhaps social media is a good way for you to support your volunteers, if they’d benefit from support.

8)    Avoid a ghost town. If there isn’t any engagement with your social media efforts, it generally keeps new visitors from engaging. How do you get engagement if that’s the case? You recruit a handful of very loyal supporters – staff and volunteers – and get them to commit to participating in your social media efforts. They have to be dedicated because it could require six months of them liking posts, making comments and participating in conversations before you see a response from others.

9)    Generate engagement on Facebook. A lot of nonprofits were concerned that their Facebook pages have little interaction. Here are some suggestions to spur engagement:

Highlight volunteers. Then they’ll share the content with their friends.

Ask questions. This gets high interaction rates.

A great suggestion from my friend, and fellow speaker George Ward: post things like, “If you love national mentoring month, click like”. These types of posts give people a reason to click “like” and have led to a lot of activity. (By the way, George is my go to guy when I have social media questions, and he’s been a huge help to Big Brothers Big Sisters. He freelances, so feel free to reach out to him, if you need a consultant.)

10) Listen. You may not be creating content for social networks, but you should at least be listening to what people are saying about you. That allows you to find advocates and respond to positive or negative comments. I’ve seen nonprofits find important supporters that they never knew about. I like to use Google Alerts. Every time Google indexes a new page with my search terms, I get an update. Social Mention is good for tracking mentions across social media. I also use HootSuite to manage my Twitter account and to track when organizations or people I’m following are mentioned. You can use this or many other Twitter tools.

11)  Pay attention. If you have time, look at the profiles of the folks connecting to you. You may not yet realize the excellent resources that you have right in front of you. Executives at a charter school once told me, “Oh my goodness, we just checked out one of our online fans, and he is a partner in a giant investment bank. He can be an amazing resource for us.”

12) Text to give. Anna Cramer from Alex’s Lemonade Stand had this great tip. Alex’s Lemonade Stand has found that offering a text to give option at events works well. Event participants often don’t have money with them or don’t want to take out their credit card, stand in line, etc. In those cases, they’ve generated a good return by promoting text to give. Of course, text to give campaigns tend to generate lower donation amounts, so don’t cannibalize something else you may be using, if it’s working at events (also, this advice is meant for activity based events, like a lemonade stand).

13) Extend your PR reach. If you have an event or news story, you can often get journalists and organizations to pay more attention when you contact them through Twitter or social media. At this point, it’s often less cluttered and given more attention than more traditional channels. Kay Keenan, President Growth Consulting Inc., added that you should also expand your PR list to include digital only publications.

14)  Tell stories. Nonprofits have a huge advantage in that we have great stories to tell. Emotional stories. Think about using video. Don’t expect the types of results of Invisible Children or Caine’s Arcade (a truly inspiring video that will make you tear up), but let these videos remind you that a great story makes a difference.

15) Linked In. Your development team and CEO can use LinkedIn to see which board members have connections at foundations you’re pitching for a grant. Board members get constant emails asking who we know at different organizations. Check and connect on LinkedIn first.

Also create a LinkedIn group for your nonprofit. This way, you’ll have a LinkedIn base that isn’t connected to an employee who might leave one day. Volunteers and supporters are proud of their nonprofits. They’ll join the group giving you another way to connect. Members of nonprofit LinkedIn groups generally don’t expect you to create content, so this doesn’t have to generate work for your team.

16) Create a social media advisory board. Include a lawyer and a social media practitioner. Even if you don’t use social media yet, you want to have your advisors in place in case you have to respond to something that happens in social media. With your board you should develop a policy and plan for managing social media. If there is a crisis, what is the chain of command?

If something goes wrong in social media, it will move quickly, and you won’t have time to figure out what to do. Also, you’ll have things pop up – for example, someone posts bad comments about your organization. When do you respond? What do you do? What if someone posts things you don’t like on your Facebook wall?

17) Post your policies. Another suggestion from George Ward. Post your policies on a tab on your Facebook page and include what types of posts are inappropriate. Then you can point to it when you have to remove posts.

18)  Know your digital influencers. Do you have celebrities or supporters with a big online following? If so, ask them to promote you. The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) said that they get about 600 new followers every time supporter Ryan Seacrest mentions them in a tweet. This is an easy ask of your supporters.

19) Publicly thanking your supporters and mentioning your fundraising events reminds people that you’re a nonprofit that needs donations. These don’t even have to be requests for money – just updates. Try to keep your requests for money to 20% or fewer of your social media posts. Another idea provided by CHOP.

20) Don’t panic. You don’t have to do everything at once. Start with one opportunity or one social network and when it’s running well, decide if you should rollout to another. This isn’t a race.

21) Choose a social network and strategies and tactics that align with your goals. Too many nonprofits get caught up in the excitement of social media and don’t think about what will fit with their strategic goals. Where are your constituents online and what do they use? How will participating help you achieve your goals?

22) Have fun. Social media is an opportunity to connect with a community of people who appreciate what your nonprofit does. Enjoy it.

I’m an entrepreneur and angel investor. I don’t work in the nonprofit space, but I spend a lot of time volunteering with nonprofits. I think nonprofit leaders have to be as entrepreneurial as their for profit counterparts and under much more difficult constraints. That’s why I’m posting this advice for nonprofit executives in my blog for entrepreneurial leaders. Nonprofit leaders are entrepreneurial leaders and too frequently don’t get the credit for that.

My slides from the conference may be difficult to understand without the audio, which is why I wrote this article that contains the main points. If you are interested, here’s a link that will download the slides. I’m planning to post audio with the slides in the next few weeks. If you want to know when that happens, please check back or sign up for my email newsletter. Signup is at the top right of every page.

I think you’ll probably also like these blog posts:  7 Easy Ways You Can Be a Better Person (the second most popular post in this blog’s history), David Boone–Hardworking Teen Goes from Homeless to Harvard and Mission Statement for Life .

What social media for nonprofits ideas would you add? Please share your ideas for nonprofits to successfully leverage social media below and let’s see if we can create a great resource to benefit nonprofits.

Click the image below to visit Holstee’s web site. By the way, code “newfriend” will get you 20% off. (I have no affiliation with Holstee. I just find their mission statement inspiring.)

I think you’ll probably also like these blog posts: Grandma’s Great Advice on Sex, How to Be a Better Person, the Perils of Tight Underwear — And Other Life Lessons, and How a Frosty Strengthened my Marriage .

There are many lessons from this including how not to resign from your job, how to avoid burning bridges (or leaving them in a complete fireball as Smith did) and the fact that Muppets is a derogatory term (who knew?). What I want to cover is the importance of how we refer to our Muppets. . . I mean customers.

Employees look to executives and managers for behavior cues. I’ve seen departments in the same company act differently, because employees are modeling the behavior of different managers.  Employees pay such close attention to managers, that I once had an employee ask me if everything was OK because I was eating lunch with my door closed. I didn’t even notice that I had shut my door, but my team certainly did.

One way to set the expectation that your team will respect customers is by carefully choosing how you refer to clients (especially during the times when the relationship may be rocky). There’s been a growing trend at companies including banks, retailers and even manufacturers to follow Disney’s pioneering lead by referring to their customers as guests.

We may have different views on how to treat customers, leads and prospects but we all should know how to treat guests. Guests are special. When you have a guest in your home, you feel responsible for a warm greeting, ensuring they’re comfortable and offering them a drink. You don’t wait for guests to ask for something; you try to predict their needs in advance. Growing up, we’d even do the “FHB” (Family Hold Back) to make sure there was enough “good” food for guests.

Almost everyone provides some sort of special treatment for guests. This isn’t how people naturally view customers, prospects and leads  — those terms don’t even sound friendly. Often we view a customer as the number they got at the counter, an order or a company.

Language by itself doesn’t create change, but perhaps calling our customers “guests” is a start. It’s one way to create a vision and set of expectations that most team members should understand.

My cousin dropped me an email to check in on Abbott Square, a real estate property he had advised me about. I had completely forgotten to update him. Oops.

Whenever you ask someone for advice or help – whether it’s about something you need to do at work, finding a job, getting new business, or anything else – remember to keep them in the loop.

Of course, I said “thanks” immediately after Jason helped me out. I should have also followed-up after I took his advice. Everyone wants to know that you took the advice that they spent time giving you, and how it went. An update is also another chance for you to show your appreciation so they feel great about the time they invested in you.

How do you show appreciation to the people who give you advice?