Foreign Perspectives

As a general rule, places in towns require a little more in the way of directions than places in the country and therefore it’s natural that directions to hotels and whatnot vary in the amount of detail that they include.

We’re in the lucky position of being the only building on the road between two villages so we say that we are 3km after one of them or 7km after the other depending on the direction that people are coming in. You really can’t miss us. The building is right on the road and it’s massive. The winery next door even has a truly massive sign painted on the side of it.

So what happens? Well, despite us being the only building on the road, despite us being massive and despite us being well-lit, we’ve just had yet another couple zoom straight on past us. Twice!

Popularity: 2% [?]

Many places tend to treat repeat customers specially through offering discounts, extra services, or whatever.

However, they remain customers and one of the key things about that is that you need to get money off them for whatever goods or services that you sell, even if they are both a repeat customer and a large one.

One trap to fall into is to be more lax with the payment terms. Unless you habitually offer credit then you shouldn’t offer it to even the best of customers as sooner or later it’ll just cause needless friction between you and a good customer. If it’s pay on delivery for everyone else then that should be the case for even the best customers too as your sales contract probably doesn’t allow for any credit in such circumstances: a recipe for trouble collecting the cash if ever there was one.

So, yes, offer better discounts to better customers. Yes, offer, additional services to better customers. But, NO, don’t change your payment terms.

Popularity: 2% [?]

We’d forgotten to hand out one of the presents for the last birthday (or was it Christmas?) of one of the little guys and came across it yesterday.

They’re just 3 and 5 so it’s only got 24 pieces. Well, had, now it has 22 and the 5 year old is almost ready to kill his brother who managed to lose those two pieces!

Do you ever wonder why you buy presents that need all the parts to work?

Popularity: 2% [?]