Lowering The Barriers To Doing Business

We all learn a lot from other people’s experiences and from stories. Let me combine the two.

A consultant colleague was recently in Dublin, about to return to the UK and then to Australia. He was at the International Airport with about 90 minutes to spare.

Looking around he notices a hairdresser. He needs a haircut. But before he goes in, he checks his pockets to see if he has any Irish currency (the punt). He did not.

So, in he goes and asks, “Do you take Credit Cards?”

The woman looked at him with disdain. “Certainly not,” she replied.

So, he now has an interesting decision. Does he stay and present a 30-minute mini-training program on why you should not put up barriers — why you cannot make it too easy for people to buy things. Or does he leave?

Option ‘B’ won.

Why on earth would she not accept credit cards. Because like so many companies, she was putting up barriers to doing business.

Many companies make it so hard for people to do business with them. Yes, they’re well intentioned, perhaps. But those intentions are so mis-directed.

Take the hairdresser as an example. She probably didn’t take credit cards because someone (her accountant?) had told her that you have to give 5 percent or whatever the number is to the Credit Card company. How silly is that. Here we are worrying about the 5 percent and forgetting completely about the 95% of the sale she never made. It simply doesn’t seem like a good business bet.

Barriers go up all over the place. Take the phone as yet another example. When someone calls, do they have to “go through the hoops” to get through to you. Is there the quite unnecessary interrogation? Or are the barriers down as they should be.

By making it inviting, easy, informative, non-threatening, educational, and fun to do business with you, you will lift your firm above your competition. By getting your clients to apply those same philosophies, their business will lift as well.

Remember these important points:

You cannot service too much.
You cannot educate enough.
You cannot inform too much.
You cannot offer too much follow-up and follow-through.
You cannot make ordering too easy.
You cannot make calling or coming into your business too desirable.

But let’s apply an important caveat. You’ve heard, of course, that the customer is always right. We don’t think that’s absolutely true. We believe in this:

The RIGHT customer is always right

So in some way, you may want to segment customers so that they experience what we might call “appropriate levels” of service.

For help identifying and lowering the barriers in your business, contact Kerry.