The Level Playing Field

Well, it finally happened. Yesterday I turned 40 years old. To some, I am officially middle aged, whereas to others, I am now a sad old man, mourning the good years that are now behind him and essentially just waiting to die.

Some of those birthday cards were just plain mean.

Well I’d love to suggest that with age comes wisdom, but frankly I just plan to keep on spewing out the same nonsense in the desperate hope that someone will read it, think to themselves “hmm, he has a point there”, and then order a generous amount of promotional merchandise from me.

There it is folks, if you’ve ever wondered why us bloggers do it, the reason it pure – revenue, and lots of it please. These blogs, tweets and all other manner of nonsense simply drive traffic. I could type out a recipe for chocolate cornflake cakes at this point and it would still be useful in the fight to boost my company’s profile.

Fortunately for you, I actually enjoy coming up with something interesting to say and every once in a while, I actually succeed. Sure it’s rare, but if you stick around for long enough you just might find some gold in here.

Today, I wanted to talk about the way buyers compare sellers, and how, in many cases, it seems a little flawed to me.

At the outset, people’s primary focus is price. That’s fair enough, we’re all trying to save money wherever we can. Trouble is that if you start there, then you’re often blinkered to everything else that matters.

The biggest issue, is that at the start of any race, every competitor is equal. Think about it, no one is interested in the runners’ position at the start of the race are they?

People need think more about the end result. What will the service be like? Will someone be taking them through every step of the process? Will they be left at any point wondering what’s going on? Ultimately, will they get the goods on time and will they be of an acceptable standard?

All really important questions, and yet when a lot of people go out to look for suppliers, they still look at that start line and based their decisions on what they see there.

The message here is that you need a better checklist. Yes, price will be on there, but if it’s in massive capital letters at the top of the page, you are going nowhere fast, because what you save today will go horribly wrong if you’re not careful.

A longer term view is crucial in the development of your business, so make sure you have one.