It amazes me how many people lose business and disappoint customers just by failing to do the simple things. There are many, many challenging, technical aspects to all of our work, but there are also simple things. Often, it is the simple things that trip us up -why?
I recently heard of a very talented landscape contractor that lost a good client because he couldn’t remember to close the client’s gate to keep the dogs from running away! The pruning was excellent, the price was fair, and the contractor showed up on time – but he couldn’t remember to close the gate! This was a new client, with a lifetime value in the tens of thousands of dollars – all lost by failing to close the gate – simple stuff!
In another case, we earned a client at Rose City Label because the previous vendor couldn’t get the billing correct! Label printing is difficult, and there are many different charges for the preparation, tooling, on-press changes, plus the actual printing of the labels. This other vendor could never seem to make his invoice match his estimate – always questions and confusion. Again, labels were beautiful, delivered on time, and at a fair price, but the simple stuff tripped him up.
In what areas of your life or business are you failing to do the simple things that make a big difference?
Technology and cutting edge products are vital to business today, but don’t lose sight of the simple things. Doing all these things right isn’t very sexy, but they make a huge difference.