It rarely pays off

Posted on June 29, 2009 by Tom

Bernie Madoff got sentenced today to 150 years in jail for probably on of the biggest fraud schemes in financial history.  After years of scamming investors, it was a financial crisis that brought it all to the surface.  It’s also the same week where a lot of kids get their final report card.  Where a few among them face [...]

Ye old happy shoe-shop

Posted on June 10, 2009 by Tom

There are a lot of difficult customers out there.  Demanding, complaining, never satisfied… in other words, if it wasn’t for the money they spent, you’d rather lose them.  I don’t like them either, they ruin my day and mess everything else up. 

There’s a small shoestore where I used to live that’s family owned for [...]

What do they need?

Posted on June 9, 2009 by Tom

What’s the most basic question when trying to make a sale?
“What does the customer need?”

That’s it.  It can’t get more basic than that.  We can throw any other number of reasons on the table, if that basic question returns a negative answer, why even bother?  Weird that so many companies seem to struggle with that [...]

Feel welcome

Posted on May 12, 2009 by Tom

I’m staying at a lovely hotel in the Netherlands at the moment and I must say they made me feel as comfortable as possible.  Most people know how it feels.  You gave all the information at once, you gave your credit card info, everything seems okay, but when you arrive nothing’s been taking care of, [...]

Your around the corner grocery store

Posted on May 8, 2009 by Tom

Everywhere you look it seems like the small grocery stores are disappearing one by one.  The competition from supermarkets is too fierce.  A lot of them tried, but it looks like a fight they can’t win.

I remember when I had to go shopping with my mom.  Always at the wrong time, when I was playing [...]

Patience is a virtue

Posted on April 8, 2009 by Tom

“The customer is always right”.  There’s not a day that goes by when someone utters that sentence, probably related to a complaint that came in.  Problem is we take that sentence way to seriously while companies have gotten more and more customer friendly and customers got more and more demanding.  They want it better and more [...]