Too much of a good thing

[Elian Degen]

Clyde and Willem


>One word of caution, however. In the 22 years I have been in business, I
have
>been in your situation a couple of times. And guess what, before I knew it,
>the phone stopped ringing, and was looking for work. Although it is very
>tempting to find ways to reduce your clientelle, perhaps you should just
>accept what you have, and keep plugging away as if you don't have a back up
of
>customers, because one of these days, the back up will be gone.  You can do
>the three things I mentioned, but don't give up everything.


Just my thoughts

Let me add Just my experience:

If you read my last post on the subject, I will repeat it at the end.  Where
I say I rated customers and not only charge them but a combined method
Example What I consider an:

 A+ customer ( old customer, good piano,keeps faithful, doesn´t  complain,
does what ever you tell him the piano need done)  I didn´t raise the price
for this one, after all a well maintained instrument takes very little time
for a service.

>From there on you can assign several ratings, up to the one that doesn´t
interest you, so you´ll go from rising prices, going through refering to
others up to drastically rising prices to get rid of him.

The idea of doing that is that here where I live it happend almost the
worse:
We had a very severe economy crisis, still going, now better because people
got used to the situation.
What happend ? The moment that things happend I lost almost 90% of my
customers, but the 10% remaining were the creme, so I survived, now almost
all the ones that left are back. so I keep working the same way

Elian

Monday, Nov 23, 1998 11:48 a.m.
Asunto: RE: Too much of a good thing


" I reached this same point eight years ago,  I used a mixture of all your
points bellow,

I rised prices for new customers, and poorly rated customers. Good old
customers had from zero to a moderate increase depending on personal rating
also.
I took full advantage of my computer, and organized all my clients by a
number which included a rating, and I left always a daily 3 hour period open
so I could fill it up with last minute interesting calls or a VIP from my
waiting list, I let know the rest of the people how long they have to wait
before my visit, Extreme emergencies go to the reserved hours with an
overcharge.
And for who can not wait I worked out a scheeme with a colleague of mine to
cover for me when he can."