New Question re: Potential Customers

[David Andersen]

I currently have 358 people in my database; I'm fairly ruthless with 
deleting people that I haven't talked to in 3-4 years, or who aren't 
nice, so that's a pretty realistic picture of my number of clients.  
However, the heart of my busines is the 100 or so serious players that 
will, year after year, spend $500-1000 per on piano maintenance, and are 
addicted to my tuning and voicing and regulating skills. This is yet 
another inspiration I got from Ed McMorrow:  find good people that are 
fanatic about their instruments, and who understand you get what you pay 
for, and trust you, and you'll make a good living forever. I also work 
one day a week for the high-end piano store in LA, tweaking their good 
pianos, a wonderful source of income and referrals.  Because I really 
like people, and have a generally excellent, quasi-intimate relationship 
with my clients, they really appreciate a call from me.....sending cards 
is, sadly, way beyond my ADD-infected organizational skills----I'm in awe 
of you guys that are that organized.  It takes a tremendous amount of 
energy and focus for me just to return all my phone calls and show up on 
time, which I now do about 95% of the time----but it's taken me years of 
struggle to get to that level of reliability.....and I honor my long-term 
clients for putting up with my time-management challenges.

It's all about relationships; any successful businessperson will tell you 
that.

Best, David Andersen




>In a message dated Sat, 7 Sep 2002 2:42:59 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
>ilvey@sbcglobal.net writes:
>
>> I like the idea and have some PTG postcards but I have yet to
>>  give it a try...what do you do with those that don't 
>> reply?  
>> David I.
>>  
>
>I don't do anything. If the customer, for what ever reason, decides not to 
>have me tuner the piano, that's his/her problem. Perhaps that customer has 
>moved, gotten another tuner, or simply doesn't feel the piano needs to be 
>tuned. But I'm not going to chase after them to get the work.  
>
>I don't take them out of my computer either, (or throw away the card with 
>he information, if you're still keeping record the old fashioned way), 
>until I get word that he/she is no longer in the area. I have had 
>customers come back to me after 4 or 6 years, when they finally realized 
>that the cheaper tuner didn't give them what they wanted. 
>
>Wim