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The most important rule

Written by: Seth Godin

Article Overview: Have you ever recommended a doctor? On what basis?

The most important rule

Have you ever recommended a doctor?

On what basis?

Did you do an analysis of the outcomes of his treatments along a wide range of patients and compare those outcomes to similar doctors in the same community?

Or was it based on his bedside manner or even how polite his receptionist was?

And what about the accounting firm or law firm or personal trainer you were talking about the other day?

Is it possible that people recommend a Mac so often because of things that having nothing to do with a side-by-side analysis of the speed of data entry in Word?

All a rhetorical way of pointing out that businesses (and people) do two things. Most of focus on just one (at least when we're doing the task at hand) which is the task at hand. But, there's something else that's far more important, something disconnected from what's produced but certainly related: how you made the customer feel.

How's this for a 98% rule: By a factor of three, what you do is not nearly as important as how it makes people feel.

If you buy that, then the question is this: why do you spend almost all your time on the wrong thing?

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Article Tags: accounting firm, bedside manner, data entry, doctors, personal trainer, receptionist



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Hard and fast rules? - [quote:3dw1ait1]If the rule says I should get 80% of my business from 20% of my customers, shouldn't I work harder on the 20%? [/quote:3dw1ait1] How old is this rule, anyway? I've heard it myself, for at least 20 years I think... has it changed in the last few years now that Internet Marketing is so apparent, or since it's all down to human nature, will that ratio never change?
Re: Is being too connected pushing your business forward or back - My email rule: Don't answer email until evening. My Social networking Rule: Don't go to Social site until I have finished other assignment. Mr forum rule: Post or start a new thread early in the morning and don't spend more than 30 minutes, then comeback in the evening to post more.
The 80/20 Rule - If the rule says I should get 80% of my business from 20% of my customers, shouldn't I work harder on the 20%? Communicate at least 4 times a year? Special offers/vip sales? Unexpected free gifts? And if the other rule says I'm going to lose 20% of my customers every year (hopefully through no fault of my own), won't some of them my from my treasured 20% list? Maybe I should work to move some of the 80% to the 20% so I can afford the loss?
Re: What makes a good business plan? - One important element as well with creating a good business plan is also the 80/20 rule. With that, you can either make it core competencies/tasks to be implemented versus the results. That way, it could be easier to evaluate if you'll be yielding big results or not as you manage both dollar productive and non dollar productive tasks in the business.


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