With the Thanksgiving season past, the Christmas season here, the whole world reeling from the economic crunch, and most businesses struggling to hold onto customers, I’m convinced an attitude of gratitude is a necessity at the closing of the year.

“How is it possible,” you might be saying, “for me to have an attitude of gratitude when I’m giving bargain basement discounts just to keep customers?” And no wonder. The economy has many dominant firms scrabbling for market share as if they were on the competitive fringe.

Simple Gratitude Helps Businesses

A classic study, A Test of Positive Reinforcement of Customers (originally published in the Journal of Marketing) found that sales to customers of a store who were called and thanked for their business increased 70% during the month of the test. In comparison, customers who got a thank-you call which included information about a sale showed only a 30% increase in purchases. The control group, customers who were not called at all, showed no increase.

The principle extends to the service sector. In another classic study, Bruce Rind and Prashant Bordia showed that a simple thank you on the back of the check at an upscale Philadelphia restaurant predicted a 2% increase in tips (adding the server’s name in addition to the words thank you produced no improvement over the control group). Message received: We need to say a simple, unambiguous, no-strings-attached, thank you to customers, staff, suppliers, even prospects… I suspect you can apply the concept in your category.

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. It can turn an existence into a real life, and disconnected situations into important and beneficial lessons. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.

Gratitude makes things right. —Melodie Beattie, The Language of Letting Go

Are you finding ways to thank your customers? Many businesses, during downturns, make the mistake of 1) cutting back on advertising and 2) not being thankful. Customer loyalty must be earned and re-earned and those who continue to earn the business of their customers go farther than those who communicate indifference to their customer’s patronage.

Thanksgiving is woven into everything. The three major religions of this world — Islam, Judaism, and Christianity — differ on many fronts while unanimously citing thanksgiving as a focal point in their worship:

Islam

“It is out of His mercy that He has made for you night and day—that you may rest therein, and that you may seek of His Grace;—and in order that you may be grateful” — Surah 28:12

Judaism

“Enter into His gates with thanksgiving and into His courts with praise be thankful unto Him and bless His Name.” — Psalm 100:4

Christianity

“In everything give thanks for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you” — 1 Thessalonians 5:18

In fact, many thought leaders who don’t recognize God as God but more vaguely acknowledge the Universe, Infinite Intelligence, Supreme Consciousness, and so on, still recognize the power of gratitude. Salman Rushdie captures the dilemma when he has a character say:

…I always in my own godless way found it hard to believe that she actually believed in an actual existing god, But she probably did; I was probably wrong about that too; and anyway, what other word is there? When there’s that gratitude in you for life’s dumb luck, where there’s nobody to thank and you need to thank somebody, what do you say? — Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Picador, p 17

When Jesus, with two fish and five loaves of bread, decides to feed over 5,000 people, one of the first things he does is give thanks for the little he has in his hands (John 6:11). I’m convinced that before he gave thanks it was not enough and when he gave thanks it became more than enough. You can see where this is going… Before we start complaining about the little we have, we need to change our attitude and be thankful.

So yes, we’re going through tough times and no, not everything is favorable right now. Give thanks anyway. If nothing else, the act of giving thanks will change you. And when you change, I think you’ll be shocked at how fast your situation changes. Thanks for reading.

Michael Holmes is the founder of Repair The Breach Enterprises, LLC, a Queens, NY firm focused on teaching business and professional development from a Biblical perspective. Michael posts often at repairerofthebreach.wordpress.com.