The new year has found our office busy with projects for the organizations we work with.  We also have our annual project of evaluating our operating expenses to see where savings could be had.

There have been two instances in our transactions that have caused me to ask if our business is guilty of duplicating this. As I ask myself, perhaps you will want to ask this of your business.

The first began as we were working on the Profits Plus website and we need to ask the graphic artist about an aspect of our logo. We had explained how we had been working on the project for the past six months and were down to this last detail.

Unfortunately the artist went into the 'sales mode' with regard to something they thought we should consider in redesigning the website. Our repeated comments about the six months of work and the near completion were not going to deter this person from the sales pitch.

A similar situation came during the expense saving exercise. We are changing the office phone system to a VOIP and we had an issue with the Internet provider. Even though we were attempting to ask questions about our problem, the help desk was busy trying to sell us all kinds of bundled services.

We ask ourselves if we are listening to our customers. The customer has a need and we wonder if we are often going into a 'sales mode' where listening should be applied first.

Another term for this is 'delayed gratification'. To us it means take care of the customer first and the business will come. Of course, this also means that your business has to always be looking for ways to keep your name in front of your customer. When you are busy, you keep your name in front of the customer because you know there will be a time when business is slower and you want to minimize that slow time.

The Profits Plus catalog of business sayings