Shane Parrish

And then she'd add this warning, don't trust it to memory.

If you don't write it down, you'll never get around to doing even the most well-intentioned tasks.

But the most important application to follow through wasn't the lists or early mornings.

It was the customers.

Most salespeople made a sale and then vanished onto the next prospect, the next commission.

But Mary Kay did something different.

She called customers back regularly, not to sell them something, just to check in.

Tell me, how are you doing?

How is the product working for you?

The customer hadn't even used up what she'd bought yet.

There was no sale to be made.

But if there was a problem, Mary Kay wanted to know immediately before it festered.

This kind of reminds me of Jim Clayton, who said you can solve 90% of all legal problems with good customer service.

Two months later, there was another follow-up call, then another when the customer was ready to reorder.

Every customer became a relationship, not a transaction, and every sale became the beginning of something, not the end.

Later on, she'd write, success in our business depends on customer satisfaction.

A one-time order is not what we're after.

After all those years and all those parties and all those follow-up calls, she distilled it to one sentence.

I would conclude that servicing the customer is the most common denominator shared by all great salespeople and sales managers.

The system worked.