Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Wilted

Wilted. That is how I felt earlier today.

In a Management Team meeting, the discussion centered around our Valentine's Day game next Wednesday against South Carolina. While we have known about the game on Cupid's favorite day for a while, we subscribe to the ROI decision making which means we try to only spend money when there is a likely chance we will get some in return. Therefore, we have been downplaying the Valentine's day game and do not have much planned.

Well, our boss had some really good ideas - no really they were, I am not just saying that. One of the ideas was to give every woman at the game a free long stemmed red rose.

I love it. It is buzzworthy. It works for me. But my budget can't afford it, so my boss is taking on the costs.

That leads me o the point of this post. I called around town asking for the possibility to get 3,000 roses by Valentine's Day. All three of the local florists I called laughed and said it was impossible. Sorry. Too late. Rose shortage. Buh by.

Really. Is that true? Well in five minutes of Googling, I found three that could take my order. My point is that somewhere, somehow those local florists were not trained to try and solve the customer's problem. If they were, perhaps they would have Googled, found the same things I found, upcharged a bit, made a profit, and more importantly made a customer fr life.

The moral is to take the time to think for a moment if you can help the customer solve their problem. Perhaps you can solve them with your product, but maybe not. Either way, you have to try.

Take care.

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