Graphic Designers – A top 5 of ‘Things we can do for you.’

3 Strategy for maximizing business • Start-Up! • Where to start?

Design & Promotion • Around the folds.

Identities • logotype • icons

Leaflets • flyers • publicity post

Packaging

Brochure • magazine

See what can be, not just what is.

Published: Jul 25, 2012

Last Thursday (19th July) I noticed this as I walked along the town. The blackboard reads ‘WANTED! Costmers With Money!” I was struck by the intended sentiment at the time. I later noticed the misspelling of customers when editing.

I took the photo at the time because I was amused by the eclectic visual, a shop using their stock to sell or so I thought until I really read the blackboard. Oddly amusing & scary though it was, the contents of the above image reminded me of an exerpt from The Magic of Thinking Big, David J. Schwartz
Chapter 4 “How to Think Big”.

In the ‘See What Can Be, Not Just What Is’ section the author offers us a few examples of seeing past what is in the present towards what can (and will) be in the future.

Example 2
How much is a customer worth?

” A department-store executive was addressing a conference of merchandise managers. She was saying, “I may be old fashioned, but I belong to the school that believes the best way to get customers to come back is to give them friendly, courteous service. One day I was walking through our store when I overheard a sales person arguing with a customer. The customer left in a huff.”

“Afterwards the sales person said to another, I’m not going to lets a $1.98 customer take up all my time and make me take the store apart trying to find what he wants. He’s simply not worth it”

“I walked away” the executive continued, “but I couldn’t get the remark out of my mind. It is pretty serious, I thought, when our sales staff think of customers as being in the $1.98 category. When I got back to my office I called our research director and asked him to find out how much the average customer spent in our store last year. The figure he came up with surprised even me. According to our research director’s careful calculations the average customer spent $362 in our establishment.”

“The next thing I did was call a meeting of all the supervisory personnel, and explain the incident to them. Then I showed them what a customer is really worth. Once I got these people to see that a customer is really not to be valued on a single sale but rather on an annual basis, customer service really improved.”

The simple lesson it’s repeat business that makes the profit.

I have always admired people who can look at a situation and see potential, the honest opportunity in it. Over the last 18 years as a Graphic Designer I have attended seminars, workshops, engaged mentors and experts to teach me how to do what seems so obvious to others.

Example 3
The Case of the Blind Milkman.

It’s surprising how people are blind to potential. A few years ago a young milkman came to our door to solicit our dairy business. I explained that we already had a milk delivery service and were quite satisfied. Then I suggested he stop next door and talk to the lady there.

To this he replyed, ” I’ve already talked to the lady next door, but they only use one quart* of milk every two days, and that’s not enough to make it worthwhile for me to stop.”

“That may be” I said, “but when you talked to our neighbour, did you not observe that the demand for milk in that household will increase considerablely in a month or so? There will be a new addition over there that will consume lots of milk. “

The young man man looked like he’d been struck, and then he said, ” How blind can a guy be?”

Today that same one-quart-every-two days family buys 7 quarts every two days from a milkman who had some foresight. The first youngster, a boy now has two brothers and a sister. And I’m told there’ll be another young one soon.

How blind can we be? See what can be, not just what is.

The Magic of Thinking Big, David J. Schwartz • Published in 1959 & as relevant today. Richard Barret of the EMPOWER Network gives an unbiased synopsis of Chapter 4

What messages are we sending out every day?

Perhaps if the blackboard had read something along the lines of:

Wanted!
Every customer is important to us.

A kind of a tongue in cheek play on the automated Eircom call waiting message would have conveyed the message & humor intended? maybe the Wexfordized version.