Requiring others to define relative words is just as important as asking them to explain specific pieces of jargon.  Relative words are nonspecific, descriptive words that only have meaning in relation to something else. 

-Michael C. Donaldson, Negotiating for Dummies

The happiest customers are those who you make feel good.  Do you focus on making your customers feel good?  This goes beyond just delivering a great product or service.  You need to also acknowledge that the best way to make a customer feel good is to say the right things and to do the right things.  When you get these right, your customer will walk away pleased, tell others about you, and come back to do business with you again.  Focusing on what you should say to your customers to reap positive results, here are 8 key things that should be a consistent part of your language and customer communication strategy...

Sales is all about leading the prospective buyer to making the decision to buy your product through exploratory understanding of their needs. If these steps have been successfully executed, then the final steps are not only necessary, but they are also in keeping with the natural flow of the call. We find that for some sales people, the cost of this final step is too high. Instead, they choose a polite and perhaps "safe" approach of, "Let me know if this is something you would like to consider?" 

In an economy where the customer is becoming increasingly more demanding and competition is all around you, what can you do to stand out and give your customers what most are missing and many don't have? There are a million pages of research that shows that the customer values good customer service, even more than the quality of the products and services themselves. So getting it "right" seems more compelling than ever. Should you get it "wrong," any efforts made for improving your service are for nothing.  

Business disappointments come in many different forms, and problem resolution is a dangerous one. Some disappointments you can anticipate, and the recovery is handled well, while others take you by complete surprise and leave you baffled at how the company has stayed in business. I, sadly, have one such story that has left us baffled. Often we share stories about how a service recovery situation saved us as a customer. The initial challenge was frustrating, but the company's response to the situation was well handled and feelings were neutralized.  This story does not have this result.

We know from the latest neuroscience research that our brains are programmed to "catch" the other person's delight and happiness whenever we see a genuine smile.  So…wait until you've been introduced, then as you shake your new acquaintance's hand and say her name, you smile broadly.  Body-language-savvy alpha leaders know this trick - it's as if you and your name brought a smile to their face.

- Janine Driver, You Say More Than You Think