Page 111 - 100 Great Business Ideas: From Leading Companies Around the World (100 Great Ideas)

151 Quick Ideas to Get New Customers

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Falling Out of the Dumb Tree

Do you believe you can build a successful long-term busi-
ness that will attract new customers by lying, cheating, or de-
ceiving customers? Do you believe your customers fell out of
the dumb tree and hit every limb on the way down? That seems
to be the way many businesses approach their customers, but
they don’t last long. Customers are not as dumb as many busi-
ness people think they are. Abraham Lincoln once said “You
can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the
people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of

the time.”

Assignment A business owner was
finally able to buy a really
Always tell the truth, high quality copier. He was
the whole truth, and nothing excited about the many
but the truth. Build your things it would do because
reputation on that. they had a variety of needs

in their office. One of their

first projects was to run

some postcard stock for a mailing they hoped to do that day. As

they fed the postcard stock into the machine, it jammed and re-

fused to print or copy anything. It was exasperating! When the

copier service person arrived and they explained their problem,

he looked at them and said “Our salesperson told you what? He

told you this machine would run postcard stock? Sorry, but it

won’t!” How long do you think that salesman will succeed when

he tells falsehoods?

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