COMMERCIALIZE YOURSELF

As I am welcomed into a customer’s home I always make the typical small talk: How are you & your family? Keeping warm? How’s the piano playing been going? While these are fine questions that get things going it was recently impressed on me that I should really be promoting myself in these moments; doing a little commercial for myself, so to speak. 

As I have reflected on, and practiced this more here recently the benefits of this “commercial” have become clearer to me. First of all, advertising is expensive, but word of mouth is fundamentally free. Also, in this context you have, not only a captive audience, but also a target audience. It also helps to set the tone of a professional business call. While we all likely become friendly with our customers, especially those we see most frequently, we should always keep the tone of our service calls professional & businesslike. Another benefit is that it may help impress on the customer that this is our job. After more than a decade of piano tuning & repair I still get customers who are astonished to learn that this is more than a hobby for me. Go figure.

I certainly don’t mean to suggest that we should barge into a customer’s home and start boasting about how magnificent we are. However, if, in a very conversational manner we let our customers know that we love our jobs, and enjoy what we do, they will begin to view us more as the professionals that we truly are.

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