For thirty-five years I have witnessed leadership fascination with “GETTING” customers. However, many times “KEEPING” consumers and buyers happy has never received the same weight of desire. I have actually heard management declare that paying customers should perceive the act of doing business as a “PRIVILEGE!” Really? Let’s get real in this episode and shatter that myth!
For thirty-five years I have witnessed leadership fascination with “GETTING” customers. However, many times “KEEPING” consumers and buyers happy has never received the same weight of desire. I have actually heard management declare that paying customers should perceive the act of doing business as a “PRIVILEGE!” Really? Let’s get real in this episode and shatter that myth!
All right. Simple BI guide to show.
Speaker 2:Hello everybody. Jeff Mason, with simple biz, 360 podcasts coming to you from beautiful St. Louis home of the blues, trying to do it two outta three years. We are broadcasting from half coast studios. Dets behind the glass there working the boards as usual. That is my grandson that opens up and says, all right, Mr. Simple biz guy, let's start the show. So love to have him involved in the, uh, in the business as well, and to what a way to break into each show. So today we're gonna have some fun. We're gonna talk about front door, back door. So what do I mean? Well, for most businesses, we all have a price of admission and that price of admission is just the qualifier to get us into the mix. So we can compete with all the other competitors for this opportunity, right? And there's, there's just, you know, there's a lot of different qualifiers that are that price of admission, things like cost, quality, craftsmanship, delivery, warranty, flexible terms and conditions, country of origin, product attributes, specs, drop, ship capability, training, you know, there's all kinds of different things that, that just you have to achieve to get in there. What about RFPs? Right? Request for proposal request for quotes R FQs tenders, uh, bids, you know, all these things have a tremendous amount of, of requirements laced through them. And so we, we work very, very hard to meet those requirements to become one of the competitive pool, but it's the back door. That's always fascinated me. It's what happens on the backside of getting in there and actually getting the transaction. Do we forget as business owners to focus on this? Do we overlook this too much? Is this something we skirt by? And we just don't, um, pay enough attention to it. And I'm just gonna use a couple quick examples, but pretend you are a restaurant owner. So, so just pretend somebody walks through your door, your door closes behind them, and now they're in, all right, you've got that person into the front door and then they sit down to have that experience, right? And we want to talk a lot in this, in this podcast series overall about the experience of the customer. But now let's think about what could possibly happen and what could lead to the back door. So the, so the person sits down and here's when, when everything's said and done, here's what they walk away thinking there was no pleasant greeting or welcoming. When I came into the restaurant, it was an unattentive, wait staff, an unfriendly, wait staff. It was a long wait just to get water. It was a long wait to get served, dirty silverware. They served me the wrong entree. They served, uh, lettuce and, and the salad was old and limp, right? No weight staff follow-ups checkups, nobody came by to see how we were doing eating air. You smelled like bleach. It smelled the whole time we ate it smelled like this bleach, the bucket in the mop are right in plain sight. I mean, I don't wanna see these dirty, this dirty, you know, mop and bucket sitting there. You know, I saw staff using dirty rags to clean the tabletop before we sat down, you know, the salt and pepper shakers, all smudgy and gooey and had all kinds of crap on'em and ah, you know, they had to hunt and Peck for water refills. Hey, excuse me, could you come on? Could I possibly get some water, you know, had to do one of those dirty bathrooms, right? No paper towels in the bathrooms. No, no soap in the bathroom. Right. And then you had to touch the bathroom handle, you know, and the door handle on the way out, but you had no paper towels to help you do it. So you're like, you know, pulling your shirt up and putting your shirt on there and pulling it. And you know, I mean, stuff like that, right? Nobody apologized for the wrong entres and, and nobody even said, thank you as you walked out of the place. So you know, that person walked through the front door at one point. Now that person is going out the back door and you're never gonna see him again. Probably if you do, it's gonna be, you know, you're very fortunate. But if, if you aren't paying attention to what's happening inside, you gotta look at those things. Those are contributors to what make people not wanna, uh, come back. And again, let's just say you're a contractor. And this, this example is in the book and you'll see the book hanging up there. It's available on Amazon 18, uh, 95. You can get it, uh, get it on our website as well. But we talk about this in the book and it's the UN you know, let's just say that you are now a contractor and your price of admission is great pricing, quality and excellent warranty. That's gonna get you into the mix for doing this job. Okay, great. So you start the job and you start doing it. What about, what about the cost of unreliable arrival and departure times? What about mysterious and unexplained? Um, a job site departures, right? What about short work days? You're not giving it, uh, you know, six hours, not even giving it five hours, unreturned phone, text, and email messages, messy end of the day job sites that the homeowner actually has to clean or the business has to clean outside doors left open constantly. You know, if you're home, if it's a home pets escape and you gotta go get the pets and bugs are coming in, there's all kinds of bugs. And I mean, the doors don't really have to be open, but they're, you know, just lazy left, open, um, tools are left out all over the house. So you gotta put'em, you know, away. So the kids don't trip on'em the dog doesn't pee on'em and all that good stuff. Right? You gotta get it outta the way and just move it out. Ladder's not put away. They're sitting up, you know, leaning up against stuff on the, you know, in the middle of the hallway, um, strain ails in the driveway. You end up getting a flat tire. You gotta go get it fixed, right. Contractor, constantly running to your store during the work hours. And he is always forgetting stuff. And, uh, or he or she, uh, contractor forgetting just common tools. Doesn't have common tools. Oh, I only have one battery backup for my drill. The drill went out now. I don't have a Dr. Power drill. I can't possibly do with a hand, you know, Phillips, um, screwdriver. I gotta go, you know, I'll have to go buy or come back tomorrow. I'll probably come back tomorrow. You know, we hear that kind of stuff all the time and then deadlines being missed, right? So it's this, it's this back door phenomenon. What, you know, do they leave out the back door and just never come back? Well, well guys, our book focuses on that in, in comprehensive fashion, we call it the silent business killers and yes, we all have that, those front end admission requirements, the cost of admission. But it's really what happens when we get through that admission process. And now we're in there and we're either doing the job or we're competing. It's it's there. If you're a restaurant owner you're competing for that repeat business, you're competing for that referral. If you don't get it, you're sunk in that, uh, contracting world. You're, you're competing for repeat jobs in some cases, other types of jobs, but you're also competing for those referrals and you might not get them well. The silent business killers is what's in this book. I mean, it's, it's threaded throughout the book and it talks about the 26 outta 27 people have a bad experience. They just don't tell you about it. Why not? Cuz they don't expect anything to happen. 91% of those people leave a large percentage, right? Of those people end up going out. And those disgruntled people tell nine to 10 colleagues. And then 13% of those people who are really upset tell 20 or more people, and it's this infection you can't even hear. It's infecting your business to thrive and sustain and be productive. And it's just attacking you. You don't even know it's attacking you. Why is it attacking you? Because your customers walked out the back door, you got'em in the front, but they walked out the back. So I want you to just think about front door and back door as a tandem and, and you, you don't want'em to leave at the back door. You wanna see him at the front and hopefully get repeat and referral business. So we're going to, uh, we're gonna have some fun today with a, uh, lost in the shuffle track. I'm dipping back to hate Ashbury 66 timeframe. I just, uh, you know, I love this psychedelic rock era. I love some of the bands that came from there. We featured a, a couple of them, uh, last year, but this is Jefferson airplane and Mike McGovern, a good friend of mine. We went to the rock and roll hall of fame museum in 2018 together. He loves Marty ballon. And you know, you got Marty ballon and Yon and you got, um, who, who ended up going to hot tuna Jack casidy you have grace slick who you probably know household name as one of the female singers, but they, um, you know, they, they kind of came on the scene as I think really one of the first to emerge outta that hate Ashbury scene as one of the most successful bands to, uh, to come out of there. And, uh, they, they, uh, put together an album in 1966 called surreal surrealistic pillow and on surrealistic pillow, there's a instrumental on there and it's kind of one you don't hear. It's not one of the regular Jefferson airplane tunes. It's called embryonic journey. And it's pretty cool. But I just, as you hear this, just kind of, I don't know, close your eyes and think about what, what, what the podcast, the messaging that, that we had today. If, if you couldn't just, um, guys just concentrate on keeping those people coming in the front door and going back out the front door, never put them in a position where they S SCADA at the back door on you. And, and hopefully it, uh, hopefully some of this stuff helps. And again, the book has a ton of this in it. We focus on this silent business killers is the epicenter. It's the whole concept that drives the book and, and really the whole concept that drives much of this podcasting as well. So anyway, uh, enjoy this tune. Hey, don't forget. Always right. Always respond to all inquiries, follow up and follow through. Remember that customer perception is customer reality, do everything you can to make sure that customer perception is a healthy one. Have a great week. We'll see you next week. Thanks.