I now can tell you what is wrong with America, because I saw it recently at Best Buy.<\/p>\n
A few weeks ago, my wife and I went to Best Buy to buy a
\nmicrowave oven; we had moved to a new home several months ago, and
\nthe new house didn’t have one.<\/p>\n
Although the store was well staffed, we were ignored as we stood
\nin the microwave oven aisle. So I went to a young woman sitting
\nat a help desk and told her we wanted to buy a microwave. “No
\nproblem” she said. “I will send someone right over.”<\/p>\n
Ten minutes later \u2013 no one came. Irritated, I marched back to
\nthe young woman sitting at the help desk and, to my amazement,
\nsaw 3 blue-shirted Best Buy salesmen standing around, next to
\nher desk, shooting the breeze.<\/p>\n
Americans have developed, in the words of writer Harlan Ellison,
\na “slacker mentality.”<\/p>\n
In my observation, not everyone, but certainly a significant
\nmajority of workers, just don’t seem to give a crap about their
\njob, their business, or their customers.<\/p>\n
The incident at Best Buy reminded me of a business rule of thumb
\ntold to me years ago: When someone is trying to give you money,
\ndon’t make it difficult for them to do so. We were ready to make
\na $246 purchase (including a 4-year service plan), and no one
\nseemed particularly interested in taking our cash.<\/p>\n
After Best Buy, we stopped at a Chinese buffet restaurant for
\ndinner \u2013 new to us because as I said we just moved here.<\/p>\n
Here, we experienced the opposite of Best Buy: great customer
\nservice. My son took a hard-shell crab from the buffet and then
\ncouldn’t open it. (I once lived in Baltimore where, when you ate
\nhard-shell crabs, you did so with a wooden mallet in your hand.
\nI never liked it.)<\/p>\n
Our nice waitress showed him how to open it with a fork and
\nspoon, patiently waiting until the task was done and then
\nshowing him what parts were safe to eat and which were not.<\/p>\n
Here’s another attitude adjustment you may need to make:
\nincreasingly, small business owners who work at home answer
\ntheir phones in a tone that is wary (instead of open and
\nfriendly) at best and downright hostile at worst.<\/p>\n
JH, a graphic designer, did this when I called her the other day
\nto see if she could design a direct mail package for one of my
\nclients. She answers in a flat, cold “hello?” She did not even
\ngive her name. When I asked her about doing the job, she
\nanswered in clipped monosyllables, as if I were annoying her.<\/p>\n
The next day, I received this e-mail from her: “Bob, I want to
\napologize for my unwelcoming answer to your phone the other day.
\nI usually don’t answer a call when I don’t know who is calling,
\nbut I recognized your name, so I did answer this time. The phone
\nrings a lot these days and most of the time it’s an 800 number
\nselling something.”<\/p>\n
I thanked JH, but told her: too little, too late. She has lots
\nof competition, and I have more than enough graphic designers
\nwho will happily take on my client’s projects with an attitude
\nof enthusiasm. Her disdain for telemarketers is simply not my
\nproblem, nor should it be.<\/p>\n
It’s ironic. Business is more competitive than ever. The
\nrecession has made consumer and business customers alike tighter
\nwith a dollar. Your customers have more choices for the services
\nand products they want to buy than at any time in recorded
\nhistory. Yet when customers walk in the door or pick up the
\nphone, so many entrepreneurs send them running, blowing the sale
\non the spot.<\/p>\n
I am reminded of something billionaire insurance entrepreneur
\nA.L. Williams once said: “You beat 90% of the competition just
\nby showing up. The other 10% you must defeat in a vicious
\ndogfight.”<\/p>\n
With their counter-productive, anti-customer attitude and
\nbehavior, so many businesspeople I encounter today are losing
\nright out of the gate. I hope you are not one of them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I now can tell you what is wrong with America, because I saw it recently at Best Buy. A few weeks ago, my wife and I went to Best Buy to buy a microwave oven; we had moved to a new home several months ago, and the new house didn’t have one. Although the store […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1848,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1848"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=956"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":960,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956\/revisions\/960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}