photo credit: flipkeat

I was reading AJ Leon’s blog this morning and thought that sipping a cuppa joe in Shakespeare’s hometown while gnawing on a “legendary brownie” sounds pretty good.

The term legendary struck me, as AJ probably meant it to. I don’t stumble across things of that quality every day, but I guess that’s the nature of legendary, isn’t it?

It got me to thinking about the products and services that I encounter and which among them are legendary.

Sometimes legendary just sits on the shelf and stares back at you – expecting you to recognize its stature without being told.

The Best Product Wins?

Some businesses act as if they were trained by this unseen, all-knowing old school mentor who believes that the best product wins.

This means that marketing, PR and any effort to become an authority in their market are things that only mediocre products require. The best should sell itself simply because it’s the best.

For that reason, the greatest product or service in the world may serve out its life in anonymous mediocrity.

Think about the businesses you visit regularly. Do any of them do something in a legendary manner? If so and they don’t make a fuss about it, maybe you should mention their amazingness to them and ask “Why the big secret?”

I’d Drive Across Town For…

Which products/services are without peer? Which of them would you drive across town for? Which of them do you seek out or at least think about every time you’re in that part of town, the state or the country? Which product, service or business would you go out of your way to enjoy sharing with a friend?

A few that come to mind:

• The Canon 70-210 L (a camera lens)
• That one salesperson at Talbot’s in Springfield Missouri.
• The Panamanian coffee beans I get a little bit of every year, especially when joined with Joel’s perfect roasting.
• The deli/butcher shop counter guys in the paper hats at Harter House.
• The huckleberry milkshakes at a little place in Driggs, Idaho, just across the state line from Jackson Hole.
• An evening meal at Charley’s in Tampa.

These things aren’t legendary because what they create is untouchable. Some are quite common, yet they deliver a step (or three) above anyone around them. Some are legendary because their creators form a great memory in the process of delivering them. Some are just incredibly consistent at touching all the bases and doing so in a manner that’s just right. Some are just great.

Being Legendary

Do you see any common behaviors or characteristics of those offering this level of quality? Success leaves clues.

To me, the folks that deliver legendary service offer consistency, little surprises, thoughtful, caring service. Not just nice, but more than you expect. Above and beyond.

More than that, they set expectations by sharing with you that you’re about to experience the extraordinary – and then they deliver that and more. Talk isn’t enough. Delivery is critical.

Muhammad Ali told you in advance, followed up in the ring, and as he stood over you….told you again while canaries circled your groggy head.

While you don’t have to deliver your message like Ali, you also shouldn’t miss the opportunity to better people’s lives in some way by helping them to see that that you have something amazing to offer.

It’s worth the effort, even for a legendary brownie.

photo credit: h.koppdelaney

One of the lessons my dad impressed on me when I was old enough to begin to “get it” (or so I thought) was “Be a good listener.”

Naturally, the meaning of that phrase changed for me over the years.

• As a teenager, it had a rather obvious meaning, “Pay attention and you might learn something.”
• As a college student, the meaning changed a bit, but the fundamentals were the same.
• As a newly married guy and later as a dad, I fine-tuned it a bit for the roles I found myself in.

Ultimately, it was about listening before speaking or acting. A handy business lesson if there ever was one.

At work, it became far more complex as it became about listening…really listening to customers (including other people’s customers) about the detective work necessary to create and retain customer loyalty, and sometimes, about figuring out what wasn’t being said while the words still flowed.

Sometimes the most important words from a customer are the ones they fail to say.

Despite the complexity that lesson has taken on at times, the core message is still the important one – a message of listening to learn, one of the most valuable lessons my father taught me.

What level of care do you deliver?

My current context for the most personal level of service was set by Hospice of Cumberland County (Tenn.), but the who and what isn’t really the context I’m trying to get at. The level itself is what I want you to arrive at, regardless of what you do.

Consider the level of care that you’d give to a sick family member. It’s likely to always exceed that given during the course of business, but it’s a standard of care that you can consider when designing different levels of service in your business.

A level of care we’re speaking of is very personal. It isn’t suited for just any business and perhaps not for just any customer, but that isn’t my decision to make about your business. Fact is, it might be perfect for a subset of your customers…or perhaps all of them.

As personal as the end of life care you’d provide for a family member? Isn’t that a bit much? Sure it is.

I suggest that because it brings a level of personal touch to what you deliver that you might not ever have considered. While you still might not deliver something that’s of the same class as end of life care for a family member, it might just provoke a thought that transforms your high end business. That which transforms your high end business quite often transforms the rest of it as well.

What level of care have you failed to offer to your clients? Beyond levels of care, what care itself are you failing to deliver to your clientele?

Doing it right

The other lesson I remember most is “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.” The unspoken second part of that is “That doesn’t mean that you should do less.”

You might wonder if there is a conflict there, but I don’t believe so. Doing the job the best you can, each time, doesn’t mean perfect. It just means best for you given the skills you possess at that time *and* with a commitment to continuous improvement.

Not starting a project (or a piece of work) because the outcome can’t be perfect is far worse than finishing it with your best, yet imperfect effort. What have you not started because you felt you couldn’t deliver perfect?

Oh and the third part…focus. Doing things right requires focus on those things. Doing 100 things poorly serves no one well, least of all you. What efforts are you making to get and stay focused? To deflect, destroy or defer distractions?

The undercurrent

Over the last seven weeks, I had many opportunities to learn while caring for my dad. Whether from him, my mom or their friends, the lessons were almost always about taking care.

Are you truly taking care of your clientele? Is there a level of care that you’ve neglected, ignored or simply failed to design?

photo credit: joiseyshowaa

Some customers have enough confidence not to settle for poor treatment by a vendor.

Others solve the problem by deciding never to come back.

If a customer settles for something, it’s because the business they’re dealing with let them do so.

The confusing thing about those businesses is that it takes just as much time to run a poor business as it does a strong one.

Don’t ever let a customer settle.

Photo by Leroy Schulz

My friend Leroy Schulz is a photographer, graphic artist, programmer, green car fanatic and mountain scrambler in Edmonton.

One of the projects he uses to keep the creative juices flowing is his POTD (Photo of the Day).

He takes at least one photo every day, no matter where he is or what’s going on.

A few months ago, he visited a friend of ours and while clowning around with his dogs, took the shot above.

To really get the impact of the photo, click on the version above. It’ll open in a lightbox.

Study their eyes

Are you working hard enough to get your customers to get that look when discussing how you’ll solve their problems?

Are your products THAT compelling?

And do you have their undivided attention?

Check the picture again. Look at those stares.

Some of your customers are probably more enthusiastic than others, like the dog in the background (note the tongue). Do your best customers feel that way about your products/services and customer service?

It’s possible, if you work hard enough.

How would it feel?

How would it feel if your customers were as interested and focused on you as these 3 guys are?

More importantly, how would your customers feel if you were that focused on them?

photo credit: James Jordan

My wife’s birthday was this weekend, so as a last bit of her gift, our youngest son and I took her to one of her favorite restaurants in the Valley.

As we sat down and caught up on junior’s just-finished semester at Pacific, the “so, what are you gonna order” discussion starts.

My wife he has a favorite entree there – and to my knowledge has never ordered anything else in our many visits to this place over a period of roughly 5 years.

But this time, she asks for something else.

Turns out that the last time we visited, she ordered this item and the creamy sauce was more watery than creamy and just “didn’t seem like it used to”.

My son likes that dish as well, so he ordered it anyway.

Taking Pride

Most of my son’s jobs have been in the fine dining and/or catering business and the chefs he’s worked for are a couple of the finest we have to offer in our area.

His dish arrives and sure enough, he notices things that would have never flown at his employers’ restaurants.

Chipped plates, for example. His arrives with a small handful of chips around the edges of the plate. Both mine and my wife’s have them as well.

He tells us that someone with pride in their work would never serve these entrees on chipped plates (this is a restaurant with entrees from $14-29).

He also notices that the sauce is thinner than usual and not seasoned as it was in the past.

Reflecting ownership

“Something’s changed here”, he notes. “Do they have a new owner?”

I’m not sure of the timeframe but I do recall a change of ownership sometime in the past.

While that may or may not be the instigation of the change in entree quality of this place’s signature dish, it doesn’t really matter because it reflects on the owner, the manager and the head chef.

The chipped plates are a symptom of “Oh, that’s good enough”.

Would you sell your business’ reputation gets sold for the price of a $6 dinner plate? Or .08 worth of garlic, a little black pepper and 4 more minutes on the burner?

How about one less restroom check per day? Or a 25 cents worth of Pine Sol in the mop water?

It happens every day. Don’t let it happen to your business. Don’t teach “good enough” to your employees.

Every little thing sends a message. If nothing else, this is high-value marketing with a low price.

Doing it wrong gives it a high cost and delivers the wrong thing – reputation damage that’s hard to get back.

photo credit: joiseyshowaa

Last weekend, we took a trip to Oregon to get our youngest son registered for fall classes at Pacific U.

During the lonnnng drive (it’s about 10 hours each way) from Montana past Portland, a few things about processes brought me back to our talk about QuickBooks and my own process improvement from last week.

What kept tweaking my “slight edge” nerve during the trip was that I was reading “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” for the first time. If you haven’t read it, one of the constants of the book is the impact of quality in one’s life, work, thought, psyche and in fact, quality’s impact on almost everything. I found it a fascinating read and something I really hadn’t expected.

The teachings of the book aside, one thing that stood out during the trip was the difference between my admission at a large state college years ago (too many) and today’s at a small, private university.

Shake and Sign

Each student begins their stay at the U via a personal face-to-face with the University president during new student orientation just before their first semester begins. During this time, the new student shakes hands with the president and signs into a book where all prior students have signed in.

This “shake and sign” event fires psychological triggers relating to commitment, group membership, and the beginning of a process that comes with what likely feels like a personal obligation to a new mentor to complete it. When the student graduates, only then do they sign out – by that time, they’re only leaving campus. The relationship to the school is fully vested by that time.

The process of starting school is transformed. For most, it’s a group event with potentially impersonal “herding” of hundreds (or in my case, thousands) of new freshman through all the processes typical of orientation and starting college.

Turning that into something very personal to each student is simply brilliant.

Personal. Individual. Welcoming. Obligation.

It created an experience like those that Walt Disney focused on: one that you had to tell someone else about.

How do you welcome new customers?

photo credit: cerulean5000

Vegas is always an entertaining trip, and in one way or another, it always comes with lessons.

This time: 4 cab drivers, 4 completely different experiences.

First, the guy who picked me up from the airport. Very courteous, asked me how I wanted to get where I was going – and then proceeded to take the long way. While he was a good conversationalist, taking the long way did not impress.

Second, the guy who picked us up to haul us to another hotel. Courteous, long-time Las Vegas resident, helpful, chatty but not too chatty and even took us in the short way to enter the hotel. A good experience, even though it was short.

Third, an amazing experience. Not good, but amazing. A foul-mouthed cabbie who drove like Mario Andretti (in a Jeep?), wound around through back streets past every strip joint in Vegas, and even managed to offer us a coupon for a hooker. Stunning.

Finally, number four.

He came to us after several other cabbies declined to take our group of 4 and our big load of baggage and trade show gear.

He pulled up, hopped out and asked why no one else was taking us. The cab guy from the hotel told him about our gear – rather than turning away, he reached into his trunk, pulled out a bungee cord and proceeded to cram that big pile of stuff into the trunk, bungee it securely and said “Let’s go”.

Four different people, doing the same job and providing four different types of experiences.

Which one do you hire?

And how do you know which type of experience they’re providing to your customers?

How many of cabbie (employee…) number 1 or 2 would it take to run off your customers?

What steps are you taking to figure out which group your staffers belong to?

photo credit: werkunz1

Today’s guest post is from Laurie Sherman over at Blendco Systems, where she offers 5 tips for turning car wash customers into fans.

The difference?

Customers wave and smile as they walk by, and maybe they stop to chat if they have time.

Fans drag people into your trade show booth. Not just any people, but people who are important to them. People they trust that you will take exceptional care of. People that they just know will become fans just like they are.

Laurie’s post is really about creating fans for any business. It really has little to do with car washes, even though that’s who she is writing to.

What are you doing to create fans?

photo credit: TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³

One of the first things you notice when you get materials from Dan Kennedy is that they aren’t glossy. They aren’t printed on luxurious paper, with fine bookboards and perfectly sewn bindings.

Usually its a comb binding or a 3-ring notebook, if it’s bound at all. And there might be typos and some hand-drawn diagrams.

Dan insists that perfect is the enemy of good. It isn’t at all unusual to hear him say “good enough is good enough”, largely because he is all about taking action. He might write a book in a weekend because he is capable of covering the topic in that time, so why spend 3 years writing it?

This is one of the reasons that Dan can produce the volume of info that he produces. The binding might not be worthy of a collector, but the information isn’t any less valuable as a result.

Good enough

Along those lines, a guest post from Wired on the topic of good is good enough.

I know what you’re thinking.

“Aren’t you the one who is always talking about differentiating yourself with higher quality, high-touch service, etc?”

Yes indeed and continue to I stand by that.

You should remember that I’ve also suggested that you have multiple tiers of products and services to reach more people with that wonderful (whatever) that you do/create.

It isn’t just about quality. Your lower end product might still be high quality – it just won’t be a Bentley. And that’s OK, because not everyone wants/needs that.

As a result, you need to “show them the ladder”: Show them how to do business with you. Here’s the entry level product/service and here’s where you go next.

If you need a visual: Sell them a Chevy. Next time, sell them a Buick. Then an Oldsmobile. Then a Cadillac. Skip a rung or 2 if they wish.

There’s always room for improvement of those products. You’ll likely never create a perfect product the first time out. Well, you might – but it might take you 10 years to perfect it.

By that time, someone will have sold your market a Buick.

photo credit: eyeSPIVE

Ever messed up a bid?

Even after 25 years in the IT business (much less other stuff), I find that one of the hardest things to do accurately is bid a sizable time and materials-based project.

If you’re in IT, you know all the reasons.

Stuff changes. Requirements aren’t necessarily what they really are. Features get added, removed, changed and re-added.

It can be troubling if you live by (or try to live by) a schedule.

As long as the communication channels are open, it works out. It works out because over the years, you’re zig zagging across the good bid/ouch line with smaller and smaller zigs and zags each time (mostly).

But I deal in atoms not pixels!

Yeah, that’s another reference to Free. I’ll stop with that eventually.

I wonder how big construction, architecture or engineering firms can afford to do that zig/zag thing.

Pixels are cheap. Atoms are not, especially when you’re talking about a project like a mall, a bridge or 23.3 miles of Interstate highway. Which brings us to yesterday’s measurement discussion.

I was talking to a guy in the construction biz a while ago and asked him about this. Based on all the bidding processes for huge municipal (etc) construction projects, are any of them right? It seems like they all go over budget and over time.

Can you imagine what the expense of being wrong is if you’re the construction, engineering or architecture firm?

Parts is parts

And then I was thinking… buildings, roads and bridges break down into finite tasks just like programs do.

In the programming world – or at least in the academic one – there’s something called function point analysis.

The theory is that you can assess the time/complexity/cost of a project simply by counting the function points it contains. Rumor has it that it works if used properly. Guess how many businesses I’ve encountered using it over the last 25 years.

Doughnut. Zippo. None.

Why? Because it’s hard work. For small clients, it may not be worth the effort. Add to that, it means you have to properly plan and spec the work in pretty good detail. Not a lot of people want to put that effort in before handing a job to a programming staff to complete it.

On the other hand, not even Electronic Data Systems used it when I was there back in the Ross Perot days and we checked, rechecked and re-tested *everything*. Twice. Three times after 5pm.

I beam with joy

Let’s get back to the architects and such.

As I noted, buildings, bridges etc break down into components like beams, walls, pillars, etc. (Now you see why I just had to talk about function points, sorta.)

Like programmers (perhaps more so), these folks deal with complex bids with lots of variables.

They bid a bridge job because they have the best bridge designer in the state. Or condo. Or stadium. Whatever.

3 days before the bids are opened and awarded, she gets hit by a bus. Or gets a 3x salary offer from some Middle East engineering firm. Or disappears to find herself by walking the Great Wall.

Regardless of the reason, she’s gone.

It isn’t unusual, but it sure will throw your design time estimate a wicked curve ball and any technically-oriented business might see this.

What if?

What if your design software had the ability to measure how long it took to design an I-beam that will hold a dynamic load (ie: a load that changes/moves). Or how long it takes to design a retention pond at a factory.

So what, right?

OK…Imagine that your design software has the ability to do that for each staffer, broken down for each possible component of a building, screened-in patio, bridge, truss, lake, or other feature.

Like function points in software, the design software might keep track of all this based on complexity – such as by the number of load points and force vectors, or maybe square footage and materials have an impact.

Maybe experience and type of training comes into play. Maybe you learn that the designer’s college choice impacts these numbers.

Speed, Quality, Complexity

Now, imagine that this software can aggregate all this data by employee, by component.

With a little extra effort, you eventually figure out which designers are the best at designing each type of component.

A combination of speed, quality and work complexity ends up telling you exactly who to allocate to a particular piece of design and most likely that comes along with a very accurate estimate of the time needed to do the job.

If you break down the design of the most complex project you ever had, you know how many I-beams, trusses, concrete walls, pillars and so forth there are, as well as what kind of loads they have.

And now – because you have measurements of what the real work takes – you can make a bid that is far more accurate than the guesses those other folks are making.

Now imagine that you make the software that allows for this kind of measurement.

Your customers are the ones who bid more accurately. They win more bids. They become more successful. Your software becomes their secret weapon. You know what that means.

Imagine soft puffy clouds

Now… consider this discussion in the context of the service you provide, from programming to sports writing to graphic arts to small engine repair to architecture to plumbing or whatever.

You may already do some of this assessment by the seat of your pants / gut feel. Is it accurate? Be honest with yourself, it doesn’t matter what you tell me.

But would it be as accurate as an ongoing set of measurement data that is based on your current staff mix? I doubt it.

Would it help? Let’s see.

• Imagine how much easier it would be to manage a project if you knew exactly what each component required time-wise.
• Imagine how much easier it would be to manage a project if you knew exactly how to allocate your people to different details of the project.
• Imagine what your sales staff would face out in the field when they realize they can confidently bid a job and know it’ll come in on time and on budget and they can whip out performance reports to prove it.
• Imagine how your testimonials would change and the impact that would have on prospects.
• Imagine how your customer retention numbers would improve.
• Imagine what something like this could do for your staff’s morale. Never a late project, ever again. Well, maybe almost never.

Measurement. Might be a good idea, ya think?

photo credit: michelleannb

Makes no sense, I know. Bear with me, it’ll clear up shortly.

I want you to read this story about ESPN’s new network for Southeast Conference (SEC) football. Don’t wonder why (too much), just trust that there’s an applicable lesson here and go read it.

Wordsmithing

Now it’s time to do a little wordsmithing while re-reading the story.

As you read the Sports Illustrated story, do this for me:

• when you read “football”, replace it with *whatever you do*
• when you read “SEC”, replace it with your community’s name
• when you read “NCAA” or “college football”, replace it with your national market.
• when you read “Florida”, “LSU” or any other team name, replace it with your business’ name OR if you really want to turn things on their head – with your biggest competitor’s name.

…and continue along those lines so that it becomes a story about your market, your business and your competition.

All done?

Just in case, a sample

Let me give you a sample since I suspect some of you might have thought one read of a seemingly irrelevant story was enough.

To make things a tad more clear, let’s take that coffee shop I occasionally talk about and use it as an example:

“At the core of our agreement is the fact that every SEC-controlled football game mom and pop coffee shop will be have Starbucks coffee available to SEC Starbucks fans throughout the conference territory state, and indeed the country, via an ESPN our distribution platform or through our partners,” said John Wildhack, ESPN’s Some Executive, Starbucks’ executive vice president for programming coffee shop acquisition and strategy.

At a time when most coffee shops and cafes are slashing budgets due to the poor economy, programs Starbucks stores suddenly have more resources at their disposal. Defending national champion Florida Starbucks stores is are adding $5.9 million to its athletic marketing budget next year and still had enough left over to kick in $6 million to cover overhead the university’s general fund.

Scary? Only if you’re the Big 12 or PAC-10 and you’re still reading the original article.

Snatch the pebble

If you truly are in the same business, your competitor’s strength is the target. Take it away and use it against them.

In Starbucks’ case, their strengths are their consistency (coffee is roasted in centralized warehouse roasting centers under highly-mechanized, controlled conditions), their retail/wholesale distribution systems and their buying power (ok, and their people, mostly).

Notice I didn’t say jack about insanely great, freshly-brewed coffee that was roasted by the owner just before the shop opened this morning.

Starbucks can no longer compete with that, or at least, they’re no longer willing to. Putting roasters in 4000 shops costs huge money (sorry, shareholders!) and takes up valuable retail space in those expensive locations they choose, plus they’d have to hire (or train) someone to do the roasting.

Suddenly, their strength is now their weakness, and you wield the Quality Kryptonite.

Update: Odd how these things travel in groups. What Harvard Business has to say about it, sorta.

photo credit: kennymatic

Today’s guest post comes from of all places – ReadersDigest.com, by way of Hildy Gottlieb.

This post is mostly about human foibles and while I don’t agree with all of the advice at the end of the column, it’s a good article to get you thinking about how you can make small slices of improvement in your life and business.

photo credit: Sukanto Debnath

In other words, can your community of clients depend on the quality, promptness, on-time-performance and regularity of everything you do for them?

Now is the time to start figuring out how to address that. For many businesses, these next 9-10 days are the slowest you’ll see all year. 

Even if they aren’t, take TWO minutes to talk to those who come in, call or email. 

Tell them you want to make sure that your service to them in 2009 is better than it was in 2008. Ask them for their help and let them know that 2 minutes is all you need.

Ask these things

Ask them if they depend on you.

If they say yes, ask them why.

If they say no, ask them why not – and shouldn’t you wonder why they are still coming back? – Ask.

Ask them what they can no longer depend on you for that they once did, if anything.

Ask them who at your business they can always depend on.

Ask them who at your business they can no longer depend on. 

Ask them if they can still depend on the quality of every single product or service you sell. 

If they say no, ask them which list is shorter – the ones they can depend on, or the ones they can’t depend on?

Once they answer, ask them for the items in the shorter list.

Get to work

With the answers to these questions in hand, it’s time to get to work.

Armed with these answers and a yellow pad, you can come up with strategies to deal with them even if you’re sitting in your easy chair. 

It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about a panini sandwich, an oil change or a complex legal question related to salmon fishing in international waters. It can be improved. 

You can do it. Start by asking for two minutes of your customers’ time.

We’ve talked about this topic a few times in the past, but today I have an example that you can learn from.

First, take a look at the “Consumer Checklist” at FancyFortuneCookies.com. Don’t be distracted by the aging look of their site. That page is worth major dollars to you if you get the right message from it and use it.

Since they let you customize the message inside the cookie, they have to make them fresh just for you. I know  because I’ve ordered fortune cookies from these guys to use as business cards from time to time.

So not only do my fortune cookie business cards stand out from the yawners that everyone else hands out, but they are tasty as well.

How tasty are those imported fortune cookies from your favorite Asian restaurant? They probably buy them after they are mass-produced, sit on a dock in a container for a week or two, then on a cargo ship for a week or two, then on a dock for another week, then on a train or truck for another few days before they were warehoused and then eventually shipped to the restaurant.

Notice that I just taught you an important difference between good fortune cookies and bad or at least unnoticeable ones? And I didn’t do it while screaming BUY! BUY! BUY!

How can you teach your clients to be better educated, choosier buyers? Even Jif does it with their “Choosy moms choose Jif” line.

Why?…

Finding the opportunity to lead your market is something that some businesses wait for years to take advantage of…and then they pounce. Well, at least some do.

Hold on there, Trigger: Did I say “Wait for?”

Leading your market isn’t something you wait for, it’s something you must make happen through explicit, planned actions.

In what ways are you the leader in your market?

• Do you offer the fastest or best service?
• Do you offer the most value for the dollar?
• Does your business have the most knowledgeable staff with the best, most up-to-date training?
• Do you offer the highest quality products – and regularly discover and begin to offer better ones?
• Do you offer the best selection of only high-quality products?

How do your clients know these things to be true? How do they learn to care about the difference?

Do you educate your clients so they will learn to appreciate the difference between so-so and outstanding?

Are you executing a well-planned effort to transform your clients into experts and connoisseurs of what you sell?

If not…Why not?

As we discussed recently, all you have to do to find mediocre anything is jump on an airplane – with a few rare exceptions – to encounter the worst of everything, including your expectations.

In today’s guest post, Chris talks about the culture of mediocrity that many of us have come to expect.

photo credit: keela84

Today’s guest post is from Seth Godin, who as usual, hits the nail on the head about how to deliver quality to your clients – while talking about the Pope’s visit to your place of business. Or not.
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/04/the-pope-is-com.html

photo credit: Hamed Saber

Have you ever been 1 in a million? If so, you’re one of those hypothetical software bugs that programmers talk about as they work on a routine that processes transactional data in a new system.

During that conversation, the pragmatist in the group mentions the possibility of a problem with the programming in a certain situation. The rest of the group rolls their eyes and one says “That’s a one in a million shot, we don’t have to program anything for that.”

And maybe, just maybe they’re right. Until they find real success.

How do I define “real success”? Let’s take a random number. Suppose you consider success to be 1000 customers.

Let’s assume for the sake of argument that those 1000 customers average 10000 transactions each, per day, in your software.

That’s 10 million transactions per day. And while this is somewhat of an edgy assumption, 10 million opportunities to stumble across a one in a million issue means that 10 times today, your phone is going to be lit up by a ticked off client.

Tomorrow, the same thing. And the day after.

In many situations, good enough is good enough (those of you who follow Dan Kennedy know exactly what I mean). However, the problem with waiting to fix these kinds of things is that they tend to crop up when your quality can least afford to get in your way.

• On the Friday after Thanksgiving if you are in retail.
• On the Monday after Thanksgiving if you have an e-commerce store.
• On April 1st through 15th if you are in the tax business.
• In June if you are a wedding photographer.

You get the idea.

Where are the critical locations for improving quality in your business?