A very nice story. I think, however, he overlooks the power of humanity in his story. It's not down to that $50 voucher. It's because he became a real person to the people he visited - a local guy, someone they'd seen in real life. It really seems all down to pressing the flesh. The other points don't make any logical sense, for example:
All these years I was right, most people let money motivate them and that creates poor decision making. I let the customer decide. The economy is tough so just give the customers what they want, money.
If it were really about him giving them "money" (a discount voucher isn't money, but we'll ignore that) and money creates poor decision making, then choosing him based on that offer is poor decision making.
It's really a combination of pyschological effects. The effect of FREE, whereby they are getting something that no one else was giving them. Also, the act of giving triggers a response of obligation on the part of the recipient. His presence there is a big deal in enhancing that effect.
I also think there is something to be said for meeting the person that's going to be doing the work. People make more confident assessments when they meet someone in person. It's certainly better than picking names of companies out of the phone book, or internet yellow pages, based on how "plumbing competent" their names sound.
As far as future prospects, the job is nominally scalable, and he can hire assistants to do the work. But he might be a terrible manager.
What I would do next is go to the places where all of the shoddy work was done and market there. There's probably a lot of work to be had fixing up that hospital.
If the plumber was a Chinese manufacturer, would we accuse him of "dumping"?
If it were really about him giving them "money" ... and money creates poor decision making, then choosing him based on that offer is poor decision making.
Yes, but it is well-known that customers make illogical decisions. Recognising that a user interface that's strictly logical may, for illogical reasons, be less usable than one that panders to the user's "irrationality" is a good business decision. Basing your business decisions around the recognition that people make apparently random choices is a Good Thing(tm).
You say that the humanity has been overlooked, but choosing someone because you've looked them in the eye and pressed the flesh is less logical than choosing someone based on their references and an objective evaluation of their work.
Any business that overlooks the human factor, including customers' potentially irrational/illogical decision making processes, does so at its peril.
How do you do an objective evaluation of a plumbers work? Most plumbing work that needs to be done is pretty small. I call the guy. Talk to him, if I like the attitude he gets to do a job. If he is good he gets a second bigger job. Evaluating based on references would only work for me if I had a big job to get done. But for small jobs, the $50 voucher and a small job from the guy who came and said "hi" would pass my first test. He would get the small job, that leads to bigger jobs.
>Most plumbing work that needs to be done is pretty small. I call the guy. Talk to him, if I like the attitude he gets to do a job. If he is good he gets a second bigger job.
How do you arrange this short of sabotaging your plumbing after the first job? Major job are rare enough that I've never needed one in over a decade of living on my own, and in 3 different countries at that.
Agreed, it's the "look them in the eye, shake their hand, and tell them you want to earn their business" part that really gets them.
The $50 voucher is the thing that gives the future customer "permission" to follow up on their gut feeling of "Wow, I like being treated like a HUMAN BEING."
I really doubt this. I live in a neighborhood where people come by all the time. They don't offer $50 cards or really anything, they just drop off their business card. Which I usually just throw in the trash. Obviously your going to call someone if you have a $50 gift card with them.
I think it is the combination that does it. I have lots of "discount vouchers" for all sorts of things, which I never use. But I need a plumber and this guy would be it.
What serves this purpose with a web app? Is it a stock photo of a person? (Doubt it.) Some bit of humor that a corporate marketdroid would never write for fear of pissing off his boss? The developer blogs? MySpace or Twitter presence? I suspect that most of the time, most of these things don't succeed.
Perhaps this is part of the power behind "Viral Marketing" in the old days when its effectiveness wasn't diluted by so many trying the same thing.
A real, honest to goodness, here we are, this is my desk, good-and-bad blog?
I signed up with Dreamhost because I truly felt they would care - their site is very good at giving that impression. Their service was poor, so I left, but that's another story.
Twitter presence is a new thing, but it certainly helps.
In the past I've found having an IRC room or a forum to help. I've chosen hosting providers this way and it's worked out every time. If they can answer my question on their IRC channel and have a bunch of dedicated followers (dedicated enough to be sitting in their IRC channel anyway!) that's a really good sign.
It's my personal feeling that most people can tell the difference between "calculated humanity" and real humanity. Most businesses and startups go for calculated humanity because real humanity is something they either don't believe in as an aspect of business, or are afraid to show because omgz what if somebody says something the readers don't like?
Real humanity means being vulnerable and talking about negative stuff, and risking people not liking you. But the people who don't dislike you will like you more. It means being genuine, not just "authentic."
When I left my parents as a teen, I partially supported myself with a Mac news/opinion site. Everybody told me that there was no room for another one, blah blah, but I decided to write like a real (& funny) human being instead of pretending to be a professional journalist like the rest. I earned $600-1000 a month in ad impressions, so it clearly worked.
Same thing worked for my current web site & information products I've created. I'm totally famous in the niche, and I'm not the best or brightest with the actual programming aspect. But my oldest tutorial from 2005 still gets about 15,000 views a month.
When it comes to my new SaaS that I just launched, it's the same thing. The blog is "real humanity" and I answer support requests myself.
When I mowed lawns I got a lot of work, not by being the best at what I did, not by being the cheapest, but by being a person. I would get most of my customers by going door to door and knocking on doors where I saw people with high grass. In my area it was rare for a highschool/college kid to have a job at all, much less one requiring real effort. It also helped that I was the one doing the work, not a crew of people working for me.
All these years I was right, most people let money motivate them and that creates poor decision making. I let the customer decide. The economy is tough so just give the customers what they want, money.
If it were really about him giving them "money" (a discount voucher isn't money, but we'll ignore that) and money creates poor decision making, then choosing him based on that offer is poor decision making.