Out of the Crisis.Org

[Louis Altazan]

Things by nature tend to move away from punishment and toward reward. Certainly reward and punishment are relative terms, but as a concept I think most will agree. The same seems to hold true with clients. They tend to move toward reward [higher value] and away from punishment [lower value.] There may be all sorts of other factors, such as convenience but this merely adds to value.

Many shops tend to believe by pricing certain items at lower cost, people may be fooled into thinking the shop is less expensive overall. Perhaps those so attracted will purchase higher priced services and the average will work out. It is not difficult to “see through” this strategy and even easier to compete with it. The net effect might be shops using this method will attract more under-priced work and price themselves out of the market on the work they hope will make up for their losses.

Competing with such businesses is quite easy and depends on two things. Demonstrating very strong value and not being afraid to have clients use other shops for their loss leaders. This may fly in the face of what has often been taught. Many “experts” recommend never allowing a client to go elsewhere, even if it means losing money. This seems like a very insecure position to me. If I deliver true value and quality I have little to fear from people frequenting my competition.

In fact there may be a benefit from people shopping the competition. If my service is what it should be, a visit to the competition should confirm this, in the eyes of my clients. People are very smart and it does not take long to see through low-priced come-ons. My experience has been people soon realize it is easier to deal with one person and that is the shop with the lowest overall cost.

Rather than working to keep clients away from the competition, I try to work to make my offerings vastly superior to what is available elsewhere. People will always act in what they see is their own best interest. If I can successfully demonstrate this, I may let other shops worry about keeping their clients away from me.

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Louis Altazan
Owner/Manager AGCO Automotive Corporation
Baton Rouge, LA