A few months ago I volunteered to help a struggling non-profit put together a program for an event they were sponsoring. This hardworking group of volunteers didn't understand the complexity of laying out a 48 page book, getting it printed, perfect bound and delivered on time for the event so I stepped in. My company put the book together gratis, found a vendor for both the print and the perfect binding and made sure it looked great and was delivered on time.  We did our part for free and they paid for the printing but since we knew where to go, they got a better price than they would have and the non -profit was able to retain more of the proceeds to help the organization. 

A month or so later they called to see what I thought of the price they had paid last year to produce another of their fund raising projects. The price sounded exorbitant to me but knowing that they might have required a lot of hand holding, I asked if the price included any set up, file work or design. I learned they had paid a hefty amount for those services in addition to the production charges. I then asked to see the book, it included color but the color could easily have been limited to a certain section of the book.  Long story short, the book could have been produced differently and saved the struggling non-profit almost $3,000 or 1/3 of what they had paid.

The whole conversation to learn what I needed to know took less than five minutes. The original printer won't get that job again this year. The non-profit will go where I sent them and my contact is so happy they will share this information with their board. 

Whether the printer used the naïveté of the non-profit to make $3,000 more than was reasonable or they provided a price based on what the non-profit told them without asking the right questions really doesn't matter in terms of the final result. They won't be doing more jobs for this non-profit and they have now positioned their company as being overpriced at the least and a price gouger at the worst with all of the board members.

Today, businesses and sales reps like to blame their poor sales on a lack of loyalty from their customers. Maybe they just aren't doing anything to engender loyalty from those customers. Wally Stettinius, former CEO of Cadmus, once told me that any company can get you what you want but only the good ones can help you figure out what you need. It's the ones who help you figure out what you need that earn loyalty.