Your Competition Has Given Up
The bar has never been lower, which means winning has never been easier.
I turned my camera on and ranted a few weeks ago.
The video touched a nerve. In summary, my daughter and I had a terrible experience with a salesperson at our local Toyota dealership.
Clearly, this man was unmotivated, untrained, and unwilling to provide anything close to service.
No getting to know us. No uncovering our needs. No asking what we’d already seen and liked. No question about our timeline.
Heck, he had us waiting in the sun for 20 minutes while he tried to find a set of keys.
But that’s not the story.
What surprised me most was how many comments on social media, about half, defended the sales guy.
What? Am I living in an alternate universe?
Here are a few excerpts of the comments:
Now, I understand Instagram and TikTok are not a great source of customer sentiment. Most people who comment do it because they have polarizing personalities and love to spew “hot takes.”
But still, this got me thinking…
The Bar Is Forever Lowered
What came through in these comments is this: most business owners/operators have reluctantly accepted poor service as the “new normal,” and the consuming population has accepted it.
Why is this?
Because it’s hard to provide good service, and we have stopped doing hard things in the last 10 years.
It’s hard to find good people: “No one wants to work anymore.”
It’s hard to train well: “They’re just going to leave.”
It’s hard to build SOPs: “Who reads a manual anymore?”
It’s hard to hold people accountable: “If I’m too hard on them, they’ll sue me.”
So instead we hire poorly, don’t train, reinvent the wheel every day, and let our customers suffer at the hands of our team.
That’s where we are today.
The Opportunity
If you made it this far, congrats. Here’s the payoff:
There’s never been a better time for a company to win by simply doing the basics well.
Your competition has essentially given up.
Over at kitchen & bath CRATE, we often meet with customers shortly after they’ve met with a competitor. And oh, the stories we hear: the six-hour meetings, the high pressure, the false promises, the plain, offensive unprofessionalism. It’s an opportunity.
Wrap Up
The tools are available. Fixing what’s broken in your business has never been easy, but where do you start?
Ask this: Where has your customer lost hope in your industry, and how can you stand in that gap?
Because if you do, the game is yours to win.
As always, if you’d like to chat about topics like this, I’m here for you: scott@scottmonday.com.
Last week's YouTube video is the fascinating story of the rise and fall of Napster. You 70s and 80s kids remember Napster, right? Check it out!
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