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What do you do when all they want is 'stuff'?

I don’t know why but just lately computers and computer stores have been playing a big part on thinking about small business. A few days ago I recounted my experience working behind the counter in a friend’s computer store. And if you’re interested you will find that story here.

Computers and customer service intruded into my thinking again yesterday like some strange search term that would only be entered into Google in the dark of the night. Only this time it was one of my daughters who pressed the search button.

Our kids are the light of our lives and we are incredibly proud of what they have achieved despite having us as parents. We have a teacher, a computer IT specialist, a soldier, an operator of earth moving equipment, a daughter who works in a mining town and will one day drive the heavy haul trucks that they use in open cut mining and a bunch of others who all make us proud.

They are all fairly astute consumers and don’t often fall for the hype that goes with marketing these days. But sometimes they bring me to the point where I wish I had enough hair to tear out and Bronwyn the teacher did that to me this week.

She has been in dire need of a new computer for quite some time now. Her PC is an old hand-me-down that we gave her years ago and her laptop is also pretty much a relic. So we decided that we would organise a new PC for her and to be sure that she got a good machine we would have our friend build it for us.

It will probably end up with me building it down at his shop because I do that sometimes just to get out of the house but hopefully I will be able to pass on Bronwyn’s machine.

But I digress. In an effort to give her a machine that best suited her particular needs as a teacher we asked her to give us a list of all the things she would like included in the machine. And she responded with just one word – “stuff”.

Our astute consumer, teacher and articulate writer and speaker didn’t mind what came in her computer just so long as it was “stuff”.

In that one word she had consigned every copywriter who has ever written blurbs about computers to a dark world where research means nothing and every subtle piece of marketing prose is worthless because the consumer just wants ‘stuff’.

But then I thought about the small businessperson who is confronted with a consumer who wants ‘stuff’. What do you sell him?

Do you sell him quality ‘stuff’? Do you sell him cheap ‘stuff’? Do you over sell him or do you look after his interests and sell him the stuff that genuinely suits his needs?

Do you take him for a ride or do you give him value for money?

He certainly doesn’t know the difference right at that point when he asks for ‘stuff’ but what if he finds out later on?

How long did you say that you wanted to remain in business?

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27Aug 2005

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