What shortcomings do you notice in the conduct of businesses you interact with?

[jaywills]

I generally make a conscious effort not to be too concerned with what other people do/don't do, or be too annoyed by actions that don't effect me.. But every now and then when dealing with people as they go about their general business, I just see examples of what I immediately take on board as what I don't want to do.

Interesting thing is that it's only in the last year where I've changed my mindset that I've started to be really receptive to these things and realised that you can learn from people's failures as much as their successes.

Wondered if it might be worth sharing: what do you see in every day businesses, that either turn you off, or make you think ''if this was my company...''?

I'll keep it to the last three that led to me writing this.

The first interaction. I'm one of those people who generally gets a vibe pretty quick on someone.I recently attempted to buy a website on Flippa, that was loosely related to one of my niches. Total experiment but thought 'why not'. Sent a fairly detailed query to get a 5 word answer back. Straight away, I got the vibe 'this guy can't be bothered'. I tried to coax him into a conversation to judge how genuine he was, but he either had the people skills of spilled milk, or just wasn't interested. Low and behold it didn't sell, and I got a message after: ''want it?'' he offered less than what I was originally planning, but by that point - I'd lost interest and he'd lost a sale.. Direct lesson into my business was that I started to make sure that all queries get a thought out, considered response and open a conversation as opposed to getting another email marked as 'read'.

Secondly, presentation. My background is in commercial management and contractual writing. That means I've adopted a style when writing professionally that is generally overly emphatic (apologies), factual where possible and intentionally devoid of all emotion, so naturally, Copywriting is not my forte. I've been searching about for a few and none have grabbed me so far in such a way that convinces me to part with the fees they are requesting. The three that did, fell down on re-reading the ads. They were so focused on creating an emotive, persuasive piece of text to draw me to the order button, they had all made some pretty shocking spelling mistakes. Although part of me said 'I'd read this far..' it made me question - how much effort are they really putting in to their work, when the single most important piece they're likely to write; they didn't even spell check? I now have anything I put out there proof read

And thirdly reputation and by that I don't even mean reviews; but how people or companies deal with them. The human streak in people seems to go defensive when criticized. Back to the Copywriters. Two of the three I was on the verge of selecting had some negative feedback. One stated ''satisfactory''. The response? "I'm lost as to why you think my service was satisfactory, I provided you with good content, please tell me more''. The more I read it, the more I thought ''wow''. No apology, no acknowledgement that they might have under-performed, TELLING the client that their content was good. The second was an individual that didn't understand the pricing so simply left feedback of 'didn't work out'. Rather than explain the situation and offer a resolution, the vendor opted for sarcasm and calling out the buyer. Amidst the otherwise good feedback, both of these stuck out like swore thumbs and the complaints themselves wouldn't have caused an issue. But the responses gave me insight into the seller's opinion of their own worth and how they handle transactions gone bad.

3 simple, simple things that I wouldn't have thought twice about before - but I think about it now, seller 1 lost $4k in a sale. Sellers 2, 3 and 4 lost approximately $150-350, plus the repeat business that I would have flicked them for 3 other websites and possibly more down the track. Potentially they could have earned thousands off me over time.

Anything out there have a similar effect on you when you're looking to undertake a transaction?

 

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