I see it time and time again. I’ll walk into a local business and immediately see them breaking at least one of the 3 Easy’s.
It pisses me off. Usually not so much that I leave, but definitely bad enough that I don’t go back. Always bad enough that they didn’t get as much of my money that they could’ve.
So what are the 3 Easy’s in business? Simple…
Rule #1 – Make it EASY for customers to do business with you.
Rule #2 – Make it EASY for them to give you money.
Rule #3 – Make it EASY for them to give you more money.
That’s it! Pretty freaking simple.
Yet over and over I see businesses breaking one or more of my cardinal rules of business.
And what did it get them? Well that’s simple too – less money from me, their customer.
Let’s talk about rule #1. Make it easy for people to do business with you. Recently I was going to do business with a man and he gave me his card, asking me to email him. So I did. A few minutes later I received this auto-reply saying something like, “To control spam I created this form you must fill out so I can add you to my contact list. Follow the link to complete the form.” Are you kidding me!
A day later I felt guilty and decided to do it. I opened the email and clicked the link. Guess what? The link was bad! I almost threw my keyboard out the window.
But this is a perfect example of what not to do. Can you imagine how many inquiries or potential customers he lost due to his ridiculous spam policy?
Let me give you another one. How many times have you walked into a store and the owner was just an asshole? Or you walk in and they act like it’s a pain in the ass that they now have to help someone. Maybe you get the silent treatment, as if they’re hoping if they ignore you long enough, you’ll walk out. If you do ask for their help, they give you those one word answers while making sure they don’t make eye contact.
Please forgive me oh Mr. or Mrs. I don’t know why my business went bankrupt! Correct me if I’m wrong, but I do believe I am your customer, they very thing that enables you live this life of bafoonery. The least you could do is be thankful for it. At the very least be nice to me until I give you a reason not to. That’s all I ask.
Do you get what I’m talking about now? Do you get why it’s important to make it easy for people to do business with you? Now do you get why it’s rule #1?
Exactly, because if you don’t adhere to this rule first many people won’t even give you the opportunity to apply the other rules.
With that said, let’s dive into rule two. Make it easy for people to give you money.
Let me ask you a question now. When you went into a local business and weren’t able to give them your money, or at least as much as you wanted, why was that?
Most of the time it was because of the old “cash only” policy. But it gets even better when they try to tell you, “We have an ATM.” Oh you mean that thing in the corner that looks like an old slot machine! Yeah because I trust that thing! On top of that, now you want me to pay the extra few bucks to both the strange ATM and my bank for using it!
So now I’m only buying ten dollars worth of pizza for my kids and I don’t get to eat until the drive-thru on the way home.
You always hear that dumb excuse of, “Well I don’t want to pay the credit card companies.” Well if you did the math, built that into your pricing, you’d be making more.
When people say this, what I really hear is, “I don’t want to pay my taxes!” Oops did I just say that? Well let me know how that works out for you in the long run. If you need some advice I’ll gladly introduce you to a local pizza shop owner where I live. He has expertise in tax evasion. Just make sure to take the saw blade out of the cake when you visit him, ok?
Let me just put this out there folks. If the only way your business is profitable is because you don’t pay what you owe in taxes, then you don’t have a business. You have a small organized crime ring!
Let’s move on, shall we?
Oh wait! If you want a perfect example of making it easy for people to give you money look no further than Amazon. Their one-click purchases have done wonders to my credit card balance.
Rule number three. Make it easy for people to give you MORE money.
While in New York City once for some work, I stopped at a pretty famous bakery in the village. I placed my order.
While waiting for the girl to wrap up my sweet little delights with that red and white string like it contained the actual ten commandments, I couldn’t help but notice I was standing in front of a cooler. Inside the cooler was their “Famous Pudding.” Oh and look, I can open the cooler myself and grab one when nobody’s looking. Then I can put it on the counter and it’s magically added to my tab without any words spoken, any feelings of embarrassment felt. I don’t have to feel like the glutten I truly am! Do you see how genius this is? Do you see how easy they made it to give them more money, and without the pain of asking for what I really wanted, raising their average sale.
They made it easy for me to give them more money.
Maybe these rules shouldn’t be called the 3 Easy’s. After all, I don’t see a lot of businesses who actually do this successfully. So maybe it’s not that easy.
But on the other hand, if you adhere to these 3 simple rules, it will easily give you an advantage over your competition and make your business more successful.
Chris Galluccio, Founder of ThoughtsWordsActions.com
Helping veterans, military & military spouse entrepreneurs achieve the success, security & freedom they deserve.
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