Their Perception IS Your Reality
By Damien Parker | September 12, 2014
Many years ago I was seated on an early morning plane flight bound for Sydney; back then, they served breakfast with real knives and forks!
The guy seated next to me was obviously hungry; his meal tray was down before the wheels of the plane were up!
And there it was!
Smack bang in the middle of the tray was a perfectly formed coffee stain from a previous trip. He studied it for awhile and then he said a most prophetic thing. Motioning to the coffee stain he said, “makes you wonder about the engines, doesn’t it?”
Being younger and more preoccupied with what I was about to achieve in Sydney that day, I dismissed this guy as a lunatic, and only a recently released mental patient could draw a link between a coffee stain and a powerful jet engine, I thought.
Later that night, I thought about that lunatic and came to the conclusion that he wasn’t a lunatic after all. In fact, he had just given me a series of powerful business lessons and it was I who failed to instantly grasp them.
Let’s study those lessons now because they directly impact upon you and your business.
Firstly, there IS a direct link between the coffee stain and the engine. What this guy was saying was that if Ansett Airlines (it did go into liquidation within a year of this flight) was this slack with maintenance inside the plane, could that slackness extend outside the plane and most notably, the engine?
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Key Point: Your customers are drawing such seemingly trite negative conclusions about your business from their observations and they don’t need to be tipped off by a fortune cookie to know what’s going down! |
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And that brings me to business lesson number two. The customer’s perception is your reality…no matter how flawed that perception might be in the first instance.
Let me repeat this most important lesson: The customer’s perception is your reality.
In fact, THEIR perception is your reality…whoever the “their” might be; be they customers, staff, suppliers or the general public. You must deal firstly with their perception before you can get to deal with reality.
Moment of Truth!
What little things (coffee stains) are your customers observing that might lead them to a conclusion on the bigger things (the jet engine)? Surely, at the very least, this matter is worthy of a training subject with your staff.
Here’s to more sales, profits and cash from your business,
Damien Parker
Business Improvement Specialist
www.salesprofitscash.com
Follow my Tweets: @salesprofitcash
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