Weekly Wisdom No.102: Nobody will ever notice the effort

An easy excuse for not trying that little bit harder is that nobody will ever notice that last 5% of effort you put in to making your products/services the highest quality. It’s a terrible amount of work that goes unrecognised by everyone but you.

Answering the telephone within three rings costs many times more than letting it go into a queue with a recorded message that it’ll be answered by the first available operator.

Interrupting your social conversation with your co-worker to walk across the floor to greet and serve a window shopper who has sidled into the store may never get noticed by your manager.

Getting your handicap from 15 to 13 is incredibly more difficult than reducing it from 36 to 26.

Hand-rolling specifically selected Sico and Ligero tobacco leaves encasing them with an African grown Cameroon wrapper to make a Winston Churchill cigar takes significantly more time and effort than White Owl churning out stogies through a machine.

Crafting the design of your new brochure professionally takes ten times longer than using a computer template, and the message is almost the same.

But it’s not. You know it’s not. And, your customers know it’s not. The message isn’t the same at all.

That extra 5% of professionalism and care, that extra 10% of effort to serve the customer, it all adds up and sends a much better message. If you do the same as everyone else you will never be any different and you cannot expect to earn any more. It’s hard getting that last 10% happening. It takes time finessing the final 5% in quality. It’s difficult. It’s difficult because everyone is already busy doing the easy stuff.

The payoff is to identify the work that most everyone have decided isn’t worth the effort. That’s what you will get paid handsomely for. That’s what you’ll be remembered for. That’s what will get you referred and recommended to quality customers who seek quality products and services. Those people will notice the difference. Then so will you.