Minimum Standard is Not a Brand

April 18, 2011 Written by Frances Schagen

Your customers should be able to expect that you fulfill your promise of doing your business competently.  That includes having the best products you can find, reasonable pricing, good customer service, fast, reliable, cheerful, careful, complete etc, etc.

It’s only if you go a step beyond, to something that your competitors don’t do that you can make a big deal about it.  When the first Dry-Cleaner offered sameday service – that was remarkable!  That was something to shout about.  Now you would be one of several in your community and your customers expect if they are willing to pay a little more, they, too can have sameday service.

Unless every other of your competitors is a total slacker, fast, dependable service, should be a given.  Saying your Restaurant is clean, won’t excite anyone, unless people are used to dirty restaurants and want clean ones.  A restaurant that can guarantee to get you fed and on your way in 30 minutes over lunch hour, would be something to talk about.

In the case of a Bookkeeping Business, the whole competence thing should be a big ‘so what…’  It should be a given that we can do bookkeeping accurately, thoroughly, competently.  Even though it is known that there are bookkeepers out there who are fully capable of messing up a set of books, business owners who come to us, expect that doing their bookkeeping properly is the expected outcome.

Taking it that one step further to make sure Our Business Owner understands what their numbers are telling them attracts the kind of business owners we want to work with.  It tells people what to expect and it lets people know we are not selling our service on price, speed and treating them like a number.

It also ensures we are very busy, especially in April. which is why I haven’t posted as much as I would like this month.

The new plan (because we are adaptable as business owners right?) is to launch the BOSC monthly group in May.  I’ve cleared the first few weeks in May to give this the attention it needs.  In the mean time I will continue to share some info this month on Branding.  I have 3 more articles started already.

Do It, Know Where You Are Going
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