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NEW Feature:
Custom Cards Now Available

Looking to personalize your monthly postcards even further? The Marketing Co-op now offers the opportunity to customize from one to an entire set of 12 email postcards. Make your monthly message have even greater impact, have The Marketing Co-op set-up cards that are unique to you. To inquire about Custom Card pricing, please email contact@themarketingcoop.com.

Featured Columnist:
Steve Adubato, PhD.

Steve Adubato, PhD., has enjoyed a distinguished career as a broadcaster, author, university professor, and motivational speaker. His book with Theresa Foy DiGeronimo is called "Speak from the Heart: Be Yourself and Get Results" and demonstrates that being a great communicator is about making an authentic connection with people, it is not simply about being "a good talker." What follows is an excerpt from from his book.

Speak from the Heart: Chapter 17 – Customer Service: The Human Touch

We’re All in Customer Service
Traditionally we have come to view customer service as something that is handled only by the people in the customer service department — people specifically trained to deal with complaints, problems, and needs of customers. This thinking is, at best, narrow; at worst, dangerous. If you have any contact with customers or clients, or if you offer any kind of service to people, you are “in” customer service. Whether you’re a sales clerk, a phone operator, an executive, a college professor, a doctor, a motivational speaker, or a lawyer, you’re in customer service. In fact, I can’t think of anyone in business who is not in some way in customer service.

Don’t delude yourself that you don’t need quality customer service communication skills. How you talk and listen to the people you deal with in your daily business transactions, no matter what your position, will directly affect your level of success and that of your company. It’s all customer service.

Listen As If You Care
We’ve talked about the importance of active listening skills in earlier chapters. They are invaluable tools in your communication tool kit that can’t be underestimated when you want to have attentive, productive, and genuine communication. This should certainly be the case with customer service. When you’re dealing with customers, clients, patrons, vendors, and so on keep these listening tips in mind to keep people loyal and keep them coming back:

  • Get yourself in the right frame of mind. You can’t really listen if you are not prepared to care.
  • Concentrate. Listen to the details.
  • Fight the urge to interrupt. Let the customer vent even if his or her facts are wrong.
  • Keep your eyes on the other person. You can’t make people feel as if they matter if you don’t stay focused on them.
  • Use “encouragers” in conversation. Try, “Tell me more,” or, “What do you mean by that?”
  • Paraphrase what you think you have heard. This helps avoid confusion.
  • Find common ground with the other person. Small talk helps find out about customers’ hobbies, interests, or family.
  • Use your body language to show your interest. Lean forward, keep your hands open, don’t cross your arms and pull back.
  • Try not to judge the speaker — just listen and learn.
  • Listen first; talk second.
  • Practice, practice. If you don’t get it right with one customer, try again on the next.

From SPEAK FROM THE HEART by Steve Adubuto. Copyright (c) 2002 by Steve Adubuto. Published by arrangement with The Free Press, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., NY.

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Member Spotlight:
Esther Levy
Travel Consultant, MCA Travel

A experienced consultant for MCA Travel, Esther Levy firmly believes that travel enriches your life. In addition to just securing low prices, Esther provides travelers with useful, insight to interesting destinations and attractions, reliable customer support, and takes care of the details that make a trip smooth, efficient, and truly great.

Based out of Mt. Ephraim, New Jersey, Esther and MCA Travel offer expert trip-planning to locations around the globe. If you wish a domestic destination like Disney World or an exotic expedition like an African safari, Esther will provide detailed information to make your trip a success. From picking the right hotel or cruise to finding a great tour or restaurant in an unfamiliar city, Esther has your best interests in mind.

By using The Marketing Co-op e-postcard system, Esther is able to advise her clientele of travels deals, hot specials and bargain fares. She reminds them of holiday-weekend locales and trendy new vacation hotspots.

"The Marketing Co-op keeps me in contact with my usual clients and entices prospective travelers by detailing the comprehensive services we provide at MCA Travel," says Esther. "By sending my clients custom postcards each month, we remind them of the importance of taking time for themselves and their families — so much so that the postcards have dramatically increased the interest in quick getaways."

To book your next weekend getaway or to take advantage of Esther's travel expertise, call her at 856.933.3207.

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Artist Spotlight
SleepWalker's Art Gallery

New Jersey is home to numerous galleries showcasing works from well-known and undiscovered artists alike. In the heart of Newark, New Jersey's historic district, is SleepWalker's Art Gallery. Gallery owner/artist Eric J. Brown exhibits Contemporary Fine Art with the mission of “Reminding Mankind of its soul…and purpose to the Creator.”

Eric J. Brown bases his artwork on stripping humans and their surrounding environment to expose energy. His style of Chi (Chinese for Breath, Energy, or Life Force) Soul (The Center of Life Force) Child (A Young Human Life Force) abstract expression was developed to remind mankind of his soul and how life flows throughout his Being, into the universe. The mission of this art form is to bring mankind closer to the Creator as a Chronologist of Abstract Expressions.

The artist's brush, palette knife strokes and syringes vary from heavy layers of paint or ink to watered-down applications of color. Brown uses syringes, etching, cutting, burning, markers, crayons, wax, pencil, ink, and paint as a way to emphasize small details with a layering effect. The sum total of his artwork gives an illusion of movement and vibrant energy along with a collage of color and images.

Brown wishes that his work may inspire observers by comparing themselves to a work of art, enhancing their understanding of the complexities of their own Being and the simplicity of the Most High.

Upcoming SleepWalker Art Gallery exhibits in 2004 include:

  • “My Brush is My Life" – April 7 thru June 30
  • “ManDaLion” – July 6 thru September 13
  • “Test Tube Babies” – October 7 thru December 9

For more information about Eric J. Brown, and SleepWalker's Art Gallery, please call 973.286.1002 or visit http://www.sleepwalkersart.com.

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