Viewing customer relationships through a strict Return on Investment (ROI) lens creates a toxic, transactional dynamic. A "Desire to Invest" (DTI) model prioritizes building genuine, long-term connections and empathy, much like a healthy human relationship, rather than tracking a ledger of exchanges.

In high-stakes B2C sales, the customer's feeling of trust and safety with the salesperson outweighs other variables. Salespeople must compartmentalize their day's frustrations because for the customer, this is their only, highly emotional interaction with the company.

While customer experience (CX) focuses on smooth transactions, customer intimacy builds deep, lasting loyalty by fostering closeness. This is achieved through empathetic actions in "moments that matter," creating powerful brand stories that resonate more than any marketing campaign.

Most engineers only interact with customers during negative events like outages or escalations. To build customer empathy and a product mindset, leaders must intentionally create positive touchpoints. This includes sending engineers to customer conferences or including them on low-stakes customer calls.

Customer service isn't just a post-sale function; it shapes the pre-sale environment. A prospect's perception of your company's service, formed by word-of-mouth and online presence, directly impacts a salesperson's ability to succeed before they even make contact.

Mary Kay's core principle was to treat everyone as if they wore a sign saying "make me feel important." This simple mental model fundamentally changes interactions, shifting the focus from transactional to relational, which in turn fuels performance, loyalty, and success in both sales and leadership.

Many companies claim customer-centricity, but few are willing to provide value to a degree that seems unbalanced. This relentless focus on the end-user, whether in product, service, or content, is a rare and powerful competitive advantage that builds a sustainable brand.

Your ability to serve clients depends on your internal team. Sales pro Steve Munn built strong relationships with his distribution center staff, treating them with respect ("more with sugar than you do with salt"). This rapport ensured they would go the extra mile for his clients during critical moments.

When a customer has an issue, the instinct can be to defend your process or prove they are mistaken. This is flawed. The focus should be on resolving the situation and making the customer feel heard, not on who was technically correct. The goal is to solve, not to win the argument.