Gratitude and Thanksgiving as a Business Strategy

“No one who achieves success does so without acknowledging the help of others. The wise and confident acknowledge this help with gratitude.”
—Author Unknown

With the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday tomorrow, we’ve been thinking a bit about gratitude and its place in small businesses.

One of the great advantages that small businesses have over enormous, faceless corporations is the personal relationships small business owners can form with customers and employees. But often it doesn’t work out that way.

This morning’s Wall Street Journal (link may require registration) notes that “the workplace ranks dead last among the places people express gratitude… only 10% of adults say thanks to a colleague every day, and just 7% express gratitude daily to a boss.” Those numbers feel high to us.

How do you show appreciation to your employees, customers, and vendors? We’re not just talking about an end-of-year holiday gift, or coupons with headlines like “To thank you for being our customer, we’ll give you 10% off your next purchase with us.”

Expressing gratitude is obviously the first step to helping people feel appreciated. Customers who feel this way are more likely to shop with you again (which equals more revenue). Employees who feel valued are less likely to look for new opportunities and are often willing to work harder than those who feel unappreciated. Same is true for vendors and others.

Think back on the last year. It hasn’t exactly been easy. Who was there to help you along the way? Who deserves your genuine appreciation today? Who should know that they matter to you, and to your success?

So taking my own advice, here’s a public “thank you” to the people who keep Logomaker running every day. Starting with Ashlee, our rock-star customer service representative. Those of you who have emailed or called us in the past year know of her superb willingness to do whatever she can to fix problems and thrill our customers. Thanks, Ash.

Thanks also go to John, a master of design, who we rely on anytime we need another web page, ad, special graphic, and even a logo design here and there. And thanks to Reed, who is an incredibly talented web-designer and keeps our site looking great. Theo and Brent also deserve a huge thanks for keeping our systems up and running, helping us troubleshoot bugs, and for simply being there whenever we need them. Thanks guys! We truly couldn’t do it without you. And we are grateful to be able to work with you.

Now it’s your turn. How will you thank your employees, vendors, and customers?

Photo credit: muffintinmom via photopin cc