In our busier-than-ever lives, where actual human connection is becoming rarer, crowded out by digital communication, the little things have even more impact. In sales, and our lives in general.

For the positive, and negative.

• At my local bank branch, the associates greet me by name as soon as I walk in the door. My personal banker from years ago, who doesn’t really even have my account anymore and is in Omaha, still will call me if there’s an issue with one of my accounts that I should know about. I won’t consider leaving US Bank.
• I got a handwritten thank you note from a handyman who did some minor repairs. It was scribbled on scrap paper, in broken English, and stuck in my door. Guess who I’ll be using again?
• I’m no longer going to a local restaurant/bar where I was a regular, because the last time I was there with a large group of guests the owner, whom I’m acquainted with, gave us a rush treatment because he had another group coming and needed the room we were in later that night.

You certainly have your own experiences where a little thing made a big, long-lasting impact. And hopefully you DO those things as well to wow your prospects and customers. (Stay tuned, I’ll tell you how you can be in the drawing to win an OfficeRunner headset by sharing yours.)

One of our partners, Headsets.com is a great model for doing the little things. Here is an actual voice message from one of their customers after she received a Snickers bar from her rep.
PLAY AUDIO [sc_embed_player fileurl=’https://smartcalling.comnewsite/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Headset.com-call.mp3′]

In their previous phone conversation the customer had mentioned to Jake that she liked Snickers, so the rep took the initiative to buy an oversized Snickers and send it to her. That worked out pretty well, didn’t it?

I told Mike Faith, the President and CEO of Headsets.com that I planned on using this recording as part of this Tip, and he offered to share a great slide presentation they put together about their customer service practices, and how they do lots of little things for their customers. Check it out here… great stuff.

And, then we decided to take things a step further and get you involved. There are lots of service and sales books that retread the same old Nordstrom-type stories about great service. But the best ones are from people like you.

We’d like to get your “little things mean a lot” story. We ran a brief promotion and those who submitted their story were entered into a drawing to win an  OfficeRunner headset from Headsets.com.  It’s the one I use, and sells for $319.

The winner was Steve Martin and you can see his submission below. Congrats Steve.

And, even though the contest is over, we’d still like your story. Please do share your experience below.