Provide a newsletter, or encourage customers to sign up for your blog. Then fill that newsletter or blog with tips, articles, industry trends, new product highlights, and relevant industry articles and resources. Create an archive section on your website that makes all previous information you’ve provided available for viewing.

Create a resource page on your website that offers a comprehensive list of engaging and helpful links to industry resources, helpful websites, associations, event calendars, etc.

Create an industry chat forum through your web page that gives people with similar interests the ability to chat with others about your industry, products, resources, etc.

Stay current on industry trends and new products, as well as competitor solutions, so you can offer educated answers to your customers.

Stay involved with your customers. Periodically check in to see how they are doing and to show that you sincerely care about them and your relationship with them.

Put yourself in your customers’ shoes. Learn more about their industry, customers, associations, events, etc. Think of creative ways you can help them be more successful in their ventures.

Don’t just use a sales pitch. Instead, share your enthusiasm and knowledge. Salespeople who are passionate are the most successful because their belief in the products or services shines through.

Sports and business have long enjoyed a unique connection. Many of the traits shared by top athletes and coaches are as valuable in the boardroom as they are in the locker room. Authors, speakers, and business consultants often use sports-related anecdotes and stories to illustrate points they’re trying to make to a business audience.

Today, I’d like to share a sports-related story with a slightly different twist. This tale doesn’t involve a famous player, team, or coach, and it doesn’t take place in the locker room or on the playing field. Instead, it involves two fans in the stands at AT&T Park in San Francisco.

Earlier this summer, the San Francisco Giants were hosting the Pittsburgh Pirates. In the top of the ninth inning, Pittsburgh’s Ryan Doumit hit a foul ball into the stands, and the cameras caught the image of a young fan catching the ball and then handing it to a stranger in front of him. The move was greeted with cheers from the people surrounding the boy. After some speculation, the TV announcers explained that, apparently, the other fan had caught a foul ball earlier in the game and handed it to the boy as a souvenir. He was just returning the favor.

Sometimes, it’s easy to get so caught up in the negativity around us that we start looking for ulterior motives in every seemingly kind act. But cynicism only breeds more cynicism, and every silver lining does not always involve a cloud. Occasionally, it takes a kind act (or two kind acts in this case) to remind us that fair play, generosity, and sportsmanship are still alive and well — in all areas of life.

The earth’s magnetic fields are in constant fluctuation. Earlier this year, The Independent (a London newspaper) reported that the magnetic north pole is “currently relocating towards Russia at a rate of about 40 miles a year.” According to the article, this speed “has increased by a third in the past decade” and represents a “faster [movement] than at any time in human history.”

The article goes on to talk about some of the ramifications these changes are bringing about. For example, magnetic compass directions are changing by about one degree per year, causing some airports to have to relabel runways to correspond with the new readings.

I mention this because it illustrates an important point for business owners. Like magnetic north, the business world is in a constant state of flux. Communication channels that didn’t exist five years ago (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) are now essential tools for marketing and customer interaction. Smartphones and handheld devices such as the iPad are changing the way people live, work, and shop. Competition for many of us has grown stiffer, and the rules are changing all the time.

Like airports that rely on magnetic compasses to identify their runways, we must keep a constant eye on the changes going on in our industries and in the business world at large. A one-degree change on a compass wheel may seem insignificant and small, but over time and across great distances, its impact can be severe.

Staying the course isn’t always the best way to stay on course, especially when the course keeps shifting.