One of the most difficult aspects of business, and life, is to put aside problems and concerns once the worst has happened. In the past, I’ve lost customers despite every conceivable step I took to keep the customer. I hate losing customers.  It’s not easy for me to shake off the disappointment.

David gave us an example in scripture after one of his children died.

Jerome McCarthy identified four priorities in marketing.  He called them the four P’s: product, price, place and promotion. In marketing we do well to follow them because when any of these elements fails, the marketing campaign falls apart.

Product

In my view, the product or service delivery is the most important.  The best marketing materials will fail to generate repeat business if the product or service delivery falls short of expectations. Remember, expectations minus reality equals disappointment.

A rock climber lost his grip and started a 600-foot fall to the bottom of the canyon. In the first several seconds as he found himself in a mid-air free fall, he thought everything was going well. However, his optimism didn’t give him a safe landing.  In business, as in life, we need to balance idealistic optimism against unrealistic pessimism.

When facing a serious business crisis, total optimism that says:   the situation will resolve shortly; isn’t our best tool.  Neither is extreme pessimism that makes us want to fold up our tent and go home. 

Quality is subjective to some degree. Quality partly depends on our expectations and the price we pay for them. If I walk into a McDonald’s for an Egg McMuffin, my expectations are considerably lower than if I go to a resort serving a wonderful breakfast for $25. Either option may fall short on quality. The McDonald’s breakfast may sit in the warming tray for 45 minutes or the resort breakfast could be disappointing, but our expectations are different in each situation.

When I started out in an office job, I had the responsibility to input customer information to be processed by a computer. My number of processed transactions was quite high. However, my error rate was also high. One day my supervisor showed me how every error had to be manually retyped. In those days it created quite a bit of additional work for colleagues. Seeing the reality of the extra work and the consequences of my mistakes made a lasting impression.  I began to focus more effectively and slowed down my speed to eliminate errors.