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In today's cutthroat competitive economy where companies are slashing prices to the bone, it is critical to remember that no matter what your title or job description, one thing is perfectly clear: everybody sells, including you.

I don't care if people call you a customer service rep, service technician, delivery person, secretary, accounts receivable clerk or receptionist. While you might not be directly responsible for bringing in, producing or developing new business, you are sure as heck responsible for keeping it; and that is selling!

If you come in contact with customers, you are in sales. Think about this: who is the one person in every company who speaks to every customer? The receptionist, yet how much importance do most companies put on that position?

When my wife and I built our house one of the appliances we purchased was a GE Profile oven. To put it mildly, it's a piece of junk. After months of fighting we finally got GE to replace it with another one. However, I still would never buy another GE product. Not because the product itself was no good, but because of the lousy way we were treated by people at GE who don't think they sell.

The customer service reps were not only incompetent, but apathetic and rude. The service technician was one of those people whose face would probably break if he ever tried to smile. He constantly gave you the impression he'd rather be doing anything aside from the job at hand. In addition, he tried to pull a fast one on the cost of the repair by stating an inflated price then telling us he would give us a discount.

On the other hand, our Sub-Zero refrigerator gave us problems originally, but Sub-Zero did such a good job of rectifying them, I would buy from them again.

When I first moved to Chapel Hill in 1997, one of the things I needed was a reliable car service to take me to and from the airport. I went to the Yellow Pages and called 4 or 5 different companies. I chose Thorpe's Limousine and Shuttle Service (, if you plan on flying into Raleigh-Durham airport) and still use them exclusively to this day (8 years and over 40k in business with them), and do you know why? Because they were the only company who took the time to answer my questions in a polite, knowledgeable and friendly manner.

People don't buy from companies or buildings, people buy from people and the attitudes and perceptions that they create. Every time someone from your company deals with a customer, they are representing the entire company. If they have a great experience, they'll think you have a great company. If they have a lousy experience, you will be perceived as a lousy company. All because of the actions of one person: think about it the next time you hire.