A lot
of us get the news from Sound Bites and Headlines. Most
of the time they can convey the story adequately. Like: “
Sox Fever Hits Hub“.
But
then you have some stories that won’t fit in a nutshell. “ Sox
Lose Game Seven” There
was a lot more to that game than a headline or even several paragraphs
could get across.
Businesses
are like that. Sometimes
all the characteristics of the business are not apparent to the general
public. The facade we
see is often the tip of the iceberg. Business
people are real good at facades. In
fact, facade engineering
is a huge industry - web
site design, logo, advertising
and public relations...
Every
business is a major corporation in it’s own mind. Recent technology
has enabled the solo practitioner to be perceived as a larger company.
|
So
how do you tell if you are buying mystique or real beef ? You
can’t. It’s that simple.
The
only way you can tell what’s under the shell is to pick it
up. Unfortunately, with
some services, you usually
have to pay for it first. And
sometimes you can’t get your money back if you don’t
like the pea.
I
started thinking about all this when a potential customer asked me
if I had a real office with real people that answer the phone - not a virtual
business with a fancy web site and a voice mail system at home. They
wanted to make sure they were hiring an iceberg and not just a tip.
There
used to be a radio personality named Paul Harvey who had a show called “The
Rest of the Story”. On
his show you could hear the whole story, not
just the sound bite. Oftentimes
there was a lot more to a given story than what played on the network
news.
|
Is
there such a thing for business ?
Consumer
Reports, the Better
Business Bureau, the
Division of Registration which licenses certain categories of business
people - they
can level out the playing field a little in logging major violations,
but we all know the best advertising is...
Even
if you have a web site, a
database, a really cool
logo and a real person answering the phone you got nothing if you don't
have a word of mouth clientelle. It’s
the only way customers can see what’s behind your headlines.
|