Dealing with the public

[Erik Loza]

A company I once worked for had both a B2B side (mine) as well as a retail counter-type operation. Management was always complaining about the cost to serve those little old ladies who wanted you to spend an hour with them, figuring out what type of acrylic they wanted for some 12" x 12" cut piece that would sell for $18. Company leadership was always talking about "taking it to the next level" in sales and would openly admit that this type of retails sales was dragging them down, yet refused to make any operational changes or sacrifices to make that happen. We all have a fixed amount of resources (time, money, equipment, employees) and in order to grow, you need to be willing to give something up. Walk away from one sector of the market to focus on another. Just my experience.

Erik

[Kev Williams]

Reminds me of 'Things Remembered', they had a novel way of dealing with one-zy two-zy take-20-minutes-to-decide jobs: Charge a bloody fortune! It used to irritate me the prices they'd charge. Yet, in the end, when all the actual customer interaction hours were tallied up, the actual profit was probably no better than 'fair'...