Asking an employee to go the extra mile often seems like so much hype from a boss. But asking them to uncover little ways in which they can almost effortlessly help to make a customer's experience better in your shop can be much less difficult-and even more productive.

Here is a very simple exercise that can pay off huge dividends if it helps differentiate you from your competition. Ask your Bloom Team staff to look outside your business for ways for you to go that extra inch to make the customer experience better.

Successful small business marketing relies on leveraging your brainpower much more than your wallet-power. When you are ready, hand each of your Bloom Team members a small, recipe-card sized piece of paper they can carry with them during the next month that has something similar to this written on it:

(Headline:) Outside Examples of "Going the Extra Inch" for the Customer:

• _______________
• _______________
• _______________

Then just bring up the idea occasionally at staff meetings during "Extra Inch" month. The benefit of having a piece of paper or note card the employee carries is that they will be reminded when they pull it out of their purse or wallet that they should be looking for extra inch examples while they are out and about doing their own shopping.

The idea is to secure five or six new "extra inch for the customer" ideas via staff input. If you can implement even one or two of these in your small company's customer interactions then the staff's time in searching these ideas out will be worth it.

Plus, these ideas will have greater acceptance by your employees--since they came up with them in the first place.

Remember: Brand (who you are) + Package (your Face to the Customer) + People (customers and employees) = Marketing Success.

2006 Marketing Hawks