Wednesday, June 2  

Ruining a good breakfast

Howdy. Hope you are well.

Mel and Jo have just returned from a breakfast. They went along to this business breakfast to hear a public speaker - he's a guy we're looking at for a possible job.

Anyway, Mel hated it. Not the speaker. Not the food (she always loves the food!). Mel hated that at the start of the breakfast the speaker had everyone stand up and introduce themselves and talk about their business. And she had to come up with her quote for the day.

That's pretty typical of these sort of breakfast meetings. But the problem with doing it can be this.

Mel hates public speaking

Many people hate public speaking. Mel hates public speaking. Makes her anxious, nervous and feeling sick. And that's just how she described how she felt for the first half hour of the breakfast.

The next hour of the meeting she was sitting there wondering if she had made a fool of herself.

Because it was a business meeting you kind of expect the occassional get up and speak thing to happen. But you don't want to have any nasty surprises for people. The breakfast organiser should have let people know on the invite that they will be asked to get up and speak.

Sure, Mel wouldn't have gone. But now you have these 2 aspects:

* Mel will not go to another one of these meetings
* She had a poor experience and won't recommend this organisation to anyone

(I have no proof for this next bit - but I'll mention it anyway. Mel's anxiety about the speak would have put her in a negative frame of mind. So she probably wouldn't have been as receptive as she could have been to the speaker and the way he presented his message. Which made her less likely to recommend him to me. Which means he could miss out on a $5,500 speaking gig.)

Make things easy for your customers. Give them options. Keep them informed. That way they'll be happier and more likely to continue to deal with you and your business.

Regards

Brendon