Are You Profiling Your Clients?
You’re small business could be losing money if you are
Well last week was just plain brutal. Long long days followed by more long long days interspersed with a return trip to Brisbane to pick up some stock for the computer shop and fit in a little Christmas shopping - hey all the good bookshops are down there 
By the way - in case you missed it - that was my excuse for not posting much last week.
We also took a little bit of time to hit a Dell kiosk in one of the malls to look at laptops. The computer shop that we’re involved in doesn’t deal in laptops to any great extent and it’s often cheaper to pick one up from a department store … or even from Dell (their PCs might not be all that wonderful but their laptops aren’t too bad)
So we fronted up to the kiosk and started displaying some interest in a mid-range laptop. The Dell representative took one look at us and went back to doing whatever she was doing on her PC. We played a little more, made some encouraging noises but she didn’t want to know us.
Maybe we looked too old, too technically challenged or even too dumb to ever really be interested in anything that Dell had to sell us and so she ignored us.
We left without buying a laptop.
Do you or your staff make judgements like that about people who come into your small business?
In one of my postings when I was a Sheriff’s Officer the town had a well-known derelict (skid-row bum) He really did look down and out and he lived most of his time in an old tent. One day I saw him go into a jewellery store and the shop assistant immediately tried to get him to leave.
Fortunately the shop owner saw what was going on and stopped the attendant. You see she knew from experience that this old guy was loaded and he often bought very expensive gifts for people who took the time to show some interest in him.
On this occasion he bought a necklace worth several thousand dollars for another shopkeeper who often gave him his lunch for free. That other shopkeeper had been in hospital and the old guy wanted to buy something to cheer her up.
Value judgements can often end up costing you money.
