When small companies give a lesson to large corporations

Can a small cafeteria show you the business model that you must follow to develop your own company, grow it and maintain loyalty relationships with your customers? Can a small cafeteria be your role model to promote the products and services you offer?

I want to share with you an experience that I had with my coworkers recently. Every day we meet in the same cafe for breakfast. The normal. A half toast with serrano ham and cheese, and a peach juice to qualify.

Sometimes, I change the juice, sometimes the ham for ham, and details like that, nothing out of the ordinary. How I know how much I pay each time I have breakfast there, nor did I bother to ask how much it is. I give the girl the money and I hope she gives me the change. Since we have confidence and we see each other almost every day, I suppose that the change it gives me is the right one, and I do not worry about checking it and I’ll take it directly to my pocket.

One morning Carola, the shop assistant, approached me to ask me: Joel, how do you want me to serve you today the same as always? It was really funny and at the same time sobering.Not only did Carola know what I asked of her every day, but also the fact that she had recently been telling her, ‘Give me the same as always but with fresh ham and cheese’ “for example.

And I say sobering, because for me as a client, it made me feel extraordinarily well taken care of and showed me that I do not have that feeling when I do business with many large corporations. And it is a feeling that I share with all the comrades that we meet there every day for breakfast. It proved to me a strong example of how the relationship with the client should be of interest, of mutual knowledge, of trust. But let’s not stop there, it gets better.

During the summer holidays, the cafeteria was closed for the holidays, as is the custom, and those who met there had to go to another local nearby for breakfast. It was impressive to feel during these days that we had to have breakfast ‘with the competition’, as ‘we missed’ “the quality of service and the personalized attention we received in our cafeteria every day.

Eye: I am not exaggerating at all. The feeling was strange, neither more nor less. We asked ourselves when they would open again, when they would return from vacation, and we even got to bother a little about the fact of having to go somewhere else for breakfast.

When they opened after the holidays, they had us all there again, sitting in our respective chairs, waiting for us to be treated in the same way as always and to remember what we asked for regularly. ”

Is not this the relationship that you, as the owner of your own business, want to develop with your clients? That your clients ‘miss your services’ “when they are not immediately available, that your client wants to buy again in your store or local, because he feels so extraordinarily cared for that he does not even worry if your prices are higher than those of your competition Would not this be something of exceptional value within your marketing strategy? Is not that what you intend to achieve with your new campaigns, even more so when the economy is as it is?

Today we can confirm how companies are investing large amounts of money in implementing actions and strategies that allow them to develop commercial relationships with their clients with the same characteristics: lasting, based on mutual benefit and loyalty.

This is where the big corporations have to learn from the small business, from the corner business, from the cafeteria where the owner knows exactly what each of his clients asks for, or from the stylist who knows that your wife likes to leave her hair a little shorter here, longer there and not too dark at the tips.

This is the kind of relationship that you should seek to develop with your clients, in your integral marketing plan, not only in social networks, but in all your efforts. That relationship in which the client becomes the center of your attention, the center of your efforts and in which your satisfaction is the objective to achieve.

Is this how you approach it in your marketing efforts? Do you think that the model of ‘the little cafeteria’ can help you to change course and generate more profitability for your business? What do you think?

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