English: Creating lifelong customer value with your affiliate marketing business. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This blog will be little noted nor long remembered.  However, I will always remember my amazing client who lost his life, in a tragic accident, taken too soon.

I know for certain that he was so much more than someone who wrote us a check.

Everyday we service our clients and do the best job possible.  We chat with them on the telephone and visit their businesses.  We try to gain some insights as to how we can help them further.  We develop strategic marketing plans and then the tactics to support them.  After we provide services, like a normal business, the client pays us.

We work towards a good energy exchange that becomes available in dollars and cents and everyone is happy.  Somewhere in the equation, we get to know our clients well.  We learn about their lives, spouses, their children and friends.  They share life stories and great client stories, some of which they have had for many years.  We also share their life challenges and their business challenges and we have the privilege of being enriched by their presence in our lives.

We come to know our clients through time.   On a personal level, we engage and exchange our personalities, share jokes, learn about each other, talk politics and become friends.

When we get to know our customers and their businesses on a deeper level their success becomes very personal to us.  We share their dreams for a better life,  along with them.  We drive ourselves to do better and better because their success is really important to us.  If one thing doesn’t work as well as we would like, then, we try something else until it works.

As I am fond of saying we ‘keep swinging the bat’ until we hit a home run because baseball is so American just like apple pie and small business.   It doesn’t matter how many times we step up to the plate, we keep hitting the ball until we hit one out of the park for our clients.  When we hit a ‘homer’~ Success!  We all win and it makes us feel great.

The truth is that serving our clients is more than just another business transaction.  When we serve others, it is personal. It should always be personal when we help those who place their trust in us, whether we are auto mechanics, consultants, doctors or caterers etc.  People who supply products and services forget that sometimes and just look at analytics or revenues.

I had never really thought about what my clients ‘really’ mean to me before this happened. I don’t need to think about it because I know how I feel.  We at Abracadabra love our customers and it is more than a heart on a dry cleaning hanger could ever be.

I can tell you, if you operate your business from the right place, invest your time and energy well, do the best job you possibly can, then your customer is beyond price.

No label, bar graph, Facebook post, money or analytic can measure the value of customer contact.   Somethings are priceless.