Order of Magnitude CEOs

One of the Secrets of Why Order of Magnitude Business Owners are "Lucky" - A Great Top of the Funnel

A few days back I was listening in on a conversation between two business owners.

“You’re so lucky,” stated Ernie, a business owner who supplies services to Keith.

“What do you mean Ernie?” Keith replied, looking genuinely surprised.

“Well Keith, I love the manager you just hired.  As you know I’ve been interacting with your new manager.  He is so motivated and a pleasure to be around.  I’ve been having a hard time finding good staff and I know some other owners who have been struggling to find talent as well.”

Ernie paused a moment and then asked, “What’s your secret, Keith?”

Keith replied, “It’s the same secret, if you want to call it a secret that I have been using to increase my client base every year.  Come close and will I tell you, we don’t want anybody else to hear,” Keith smiled as he was obviously joking.

Ernie didn’t see it as a joke though and he leaned closer to hear what Keith would say, forcing me to subtly take a few steps closer to their conversation.

Keith started talking, “Well, let’s take it as a given that you already have a good offer because if you didn’t, nothing else matters.  To add quality staff and to grow your customer base, it is important that you allocate time and resources to building the top of your funnel.  It’s a numbers game.”

“Go on,” Ernie implored, “What do you mean, building the top of your funnel?”

“For instance,” Keith continued, “for my manager position that I recently filled, I advertised consistently over the last month as well as I told business colleagues in the industry that I was looking to fill this position.  I ended up getting about 100 resumes, meeting 10 people in person and hiring the manager you have been with these past few weeks.  So, although it may seem “lucky” to you, to me I made my own luck by getting 100 candidates at the top of the funnel which led to hiring one great person who is a perfect fit for my organization.”

“Wow, that’s a lot of work just to hire one person,” Ernie blurted out.

“Yes it is, creating a big top of the funnel requires work,” Keith replied, “now do you want to hear how I got lucky at growing sales these past few years,” Keith smiled again.

“Let me guess Keith, a big top of the funnel.”

“Exactly”, Keith replied, if I want to sign 10 new clients, and I know from experience that only 1 in 5 leads become clients then I need a funnel that is….”

“50 leads” Ernie jumped in and then continued, “Keith - You can be certain you won’t hear me calling you lucky again!” 

“I don’t care what you call me just don’t call me late for dinner,” Keith deadpanned.

They both laughed as Ernie replied, “I can tell you one thing, you chose the right profession - good thing you’re a business owner and not a comedian.”

Does the “Clothing” and “Appearance” of your Firm Match Your Ambition - What Wrong Snap Judgments are Prospects Making about Your Business?

A few days back, I just made my train home and took the first good end seat I spotted.  I wrapped up a conference call that I was on where for the most part I listened, so I kept the phone on mute.

After the call ended, I started dialing a client to call him back when I finally noticed the person next to me on the window side.  Based on his attire and facial expressions, I made an immediate snap judgment based on previous not so enjoyable experiences that this person would not only like me to get off the phone but that he could even be hostile if I made another call.  Even though I really wanted to call the client back and the conversation would be short, I sensed any conversation would be too much for him.

Later on during the train ride, the person sitting right in front of me, made a call and talked relatively loud, the man who I thought would  be upset just plugged in his earphones and listened to music and started to hum.

Boy was a wrong.

What has this got do with your business?

Every day your firm is making new first impressions with potential prospects and partners.  How is this being done? By the first touch point they experience.

It could be your website, marketing collateral or a sales person.

With this in mind, think of your target prospect.  Now, take a new look at your website.  Does it make you look too small or in some way not the right fit?

Now look at your other touch points such as the physical collateral or the leave behind your sales team gives potential prospects?  Does it positively portray your firm?  How about the sales people themselves? How do they dress and speak?  Are they on time to meetings?  Do they accurately represent your firm as it exists today?  Better yet, do they represent where your firm is going?

Every day, your prospects are making initial snap judgments about your firm based on the “clothing” and “appearance” of your firm before they get to know you.  Is your firm well-groomed or disheveled?

Why? Because based on history and a limited amount of time to make decisions, rightly or wrongly, a prospect must make snap judgments about your business just like people make snap judgments about you, just as I did with the person sitting next to me on the train.  Overcoming this initial snap judgment is not only very challenging but unnecessary.  Make sure the “clothing” and “appearance” of your firm is not giving off the wrong impression and even better matches the ambition of where you want to go not where you have been.

Crowdsourcing and How One Bad Review Can Cost You a Deal but Finding Out Why Can Help You Win in the Long Run

“Remember that deal I was furious about losing back in the middle of last year.” “Sorry Tim.” I had to confess to Tim that unfortunately I did not. “You know the one,” Tim continued, “I thought my sales team had it all wrapped up and then we lost it.” “Oh yes, vaguely,” I replied. “Well I just found out this week why we lost. It turns out that a business acquaintance of the decision maker had just come off a really bad experience with us where from her point of view we over promised on a crucial delivery schedule. She ended up not hiring us for any additional work and I never bothered to find out why, now I know.”

“That’s awesome Tim, that you found out why you lost the client, at least now you can do something about it. Your situation reminds me of a couple recent consumer purchases I made at the end of last year. In December the screen on my supposedly high end HP laptop died after less than two years of use. To purchase its replacement, I went looking for a non HP 12” disposable Netbook that could easily run Windows 7 and Microsoft Office applications. I ended up purchasing a brand that I had never used, let alone, heard of. What caused me to purchase a Hannspree were the excellent crowd sourcing reviews, so I knew what I was getting before the actual purchase. This is the way I now narrow down movie selections (Rotten Tomatoes), new restaurants (Yelp) and more recently how I select local handymen and contractors to do work in and around my house. For selecting the last two service providers for my house, a plumber and handyman, I used the crowd sourcing reviews on Angie’s List.”

“Excuse me Jeff, what does consumer crowd sourcing got to do with me losing a deal due to a bad employee commitment?” Tim finally exclaimed.

“Although crowd sourcing is relatively new Tim” I continued, “the buying process has not changed. If you lose an existing client unexpectedly or lose winning a new client when you think you should have won, you must understand why your offer was not selected. Are you targeting the wrong buyer which leads to bad client “reviews”, is your offer inferior to other choices in a particular category, or is there an expectation mismatch that could have been avoided? Only by finding out why buyers really select your offer and even more importantly, why they do not or decide to not work with you any longer, is it possible to make the necessary changes to your sales, marketing, and offer to take the next leap forward in terms of what the collective wisdom of the “crowd” thinks about your offer.”

“At least it was worth the wait Jeff, got to run, just checking though that there is no apostrophe in the web address for Angie’s List, right, because I need an electrician.”

Want to Make it to the Train on Time or Get Your Deals Closed this Month, Work Backwards Starting Now

Last week I was running to make a train leaving Penn Station.  For the thirty minutes before the train was scheduled to leave I did everything possible to make the train. I sprinted down 7^th Avenue, scampered down the stairs of Penn Station just below the ever-present Verizon Wireless advertising, quickly glanced at the board at full speed to get the track number.  The “All Aboard” for my train was already on.  I continued to charge down the steps towards my train and just as I reached the bottom I saw my train slowly begin to depart the station.  Out of breadth and frustrated, I had missed my train even though I did everything I could do to make the train.  I had just started too late.

I was reminded of this experience after reading a wonderful and brief blog post from Sales Consultant Charles Bernard owner of Criteria for Success on the subject of Wishy-Washy prospects.  Charles’ blog post addresses what can go wrong for a member of your sales team during the latter stages of a sales cycle with a prospect, where suddenly the sales person can no longer get in touch with the prospect or the prospect no longer seems certain of wanting to move forward with you.

I have noticed that the best time to address these issues and more is during your initial conversations with a prospect when you agree on the ground rules on how you will work together.  If you want to get a deal closed this month, before your prospect is in holiday mode, review now when the prospect wants to start using your product or service and then together work backwards to figure out when the agreement must be complete as well as all the prior steps that must happen. If your prospect wants to start using your firm or another firm right after the New Year then this upfront conversation will help ensure that all the interim steps that neither you nor the prospect desires, like legal review or reference checks, occurs at the proper pace so the contract gets signed on time – preferably before the end of the year.  The earlier you have this planning conversation with your prospect the easier it is to identify slippage in the mutually agreed upon schedule and have a candid conversation to either get things back on schedule, create a revised schedule, or perhaps get a quick “no” as opposed to a drawn out “maybe” which leads to the eventual “no.”

There is nothing worse than spending time on a “maybe” which is already a “no” except perhaps attempting to make a train that has already left the station.

What to do in a World of Infinite Shelf Space

Last week, I was speaking with Fred, a business owner that had paid a social networking firm to build his firm’s presence on Facebook (and Twitter) and now had over 10,000 people that “like” his business and that follow him.  “Isn’t that awesome”, he exclaimed to me.  “That’s great Fred, how has it helped your business – are you getting more leads or is it helping in some other way?” I asked.  After further discussion I learned that these 10,000 people were spread across the world and they were neither prospects nor trusted influencers to his prospects. Unfortunately for Fred, we both concluded that this particular investment had not helped his business at all and in fact was a distraction. 

Later on the same day I met with Rachel, another business owner, who mentioned to me that by strategically using LinkedIn to connect with clients and partners over the years, it had helped her multiple times separate her firm from the dozens of other firms that had a similar offer.  For example, Rachel explained that a large prospect decided to go with her firm after using LinkedIn and discovering that a number of important business relationships were also connected to Rachel.  These relationships vouched for Rachel and her firm, all behind the scenes, with Rachel only finding out later.  Rachel’s investment in social media had paid off.

These conversations reminded me of my time at The Discovery Channel in the mid 1990s when I spent a couple of years working in their consumer software division.  In my last role, I was the product manager for their Family/Kids line of consumer software titles.  We produced a bunch of titles based on Discovery Channel properties that were either strictly educational with catchy names like Sharks, Whales, and Animal Planet as well as Kid games (“infotainment”) such as Skytrip America and Invention Studio.  Amazingly, a number of these titles can still be purchased from Amazon.  But they’re not.  At least not in any quantity or price point that is valuable for anyone.  With infinite Shelf Space, more than ever it is not just about getting shelf space, but selecting the right shelf for your products and services and counterintuitively, where do you not want your offer to show up.

While at Discovery Channel, I spent a great deal of time evaluating all the ways and places that our target customer of kids 8-12 years old and their parents (Kids Love, Parent Approved) could find out about the titles I mentioned above.  For instance, I would go to retail stores ranging from Wal-Mart and Costco to specialty stores like Egghead Software and Babbage's to see how many titles they carried and how they appeared on the shelf.  I would watch parents and kids go into the kids section to try to understand what mattered in selecting one title over the next and even if it was worth trying to get shelf space or great shelf space, like an endcap, with that particular retailer.  

The most important questions I had to answer were “how important was it to be in that particular retailer’s stores and how valuable was the shelf space for our title(s) compared to other retailers?” 

The incite for business owners is that no matter what you sell, it still comes down to decisions regarding marketing and distribution.  I don’t care what the product or service is.  And with more choices than ever for the buyer, the business must make choices on where not to be in order to focus on the shelf space that matters.

If you are spending a significant amount of resources selling, marketing or distributing via a channel like Facebook, is that a conscious choice?  If not, you may be allocating limited resources on getting premium shelf space where it doesn’t matter for your prospective customer.  This is why Facebook matters for some businesses and is completely irrelevant for others. 

By systematically understanding and then ranking your choices for the marketing and distribution of your offer, you can take steps to ensure that if your offer is intended for high income families it is not relegated to the equivalent of a single SKU in the wrong section of Whole Foods or Wegmans.  Or even worse, end up as an endcap in the equivalent of the local Dollar Store.

Don’t Be Proud If 80% of Your Prospects Become Clients

 

I recently had a conversation with one of my favorite sales people, Matt.  Matt, is a high performer that is typically first or second in quota for his territory.  I asked how he was doing and he replied that he was having a typical great year but one of his clients, a business owner was not.   I asked Matt to explain.  “His close ratio is way too high; his firm is closing 80% of the leads they get.”   “Wow", I exclaimed, “And what’s wrong with that Matt?”  Matt explained the problem, “If his organization is closing 80% of their leads that means the only leads they get are client referrals that were basically sold before they even met somebody from his organization.”  Matt continued, “That may work if an owner or sales person has a relatively small revenue target but it is no way to grow unless you have an extremely viral consumer offer which doesn’t happen very often.”  “Personally,” Matt went on, “I typically close about 25% of the leads I get because my leads come from all different sources.  If all my leads were client referrals, I would have an 80% close ratio as well but there would be no way I could make my quota let alone double it which as you know is my personal goal to achieve my own financial objectives.”

My conversation with Matt got me thinking that there still are a number of businesses (and hence business owners) that are stuck getting business predominantly the old fashioned way, client referrals.  If prospects only hear about your product or service from your current clients, it may be that you have a good offer but that is not enough to scale your business.

There are three attributes for why clients are a great referral source (e.g. high close ratio) but why you can’t count on them to dramatically scale your business:

Expertise:  Is the person perceived as an expert about your offer?  Client referrals are great if the other person or organization is similar or expects to use the product or service in the same way.   If a CFO from a mid-sized corporation receives a recommendation from a CFO with another mid-sized corporation in the same industry it is likely that recommendation will be significant and be a great referral.  Unfortunately, that is not always the case.

Access: Does the client have access to your target prospects?  Client referrals typically will have prospects they can recommend your product or service to but once they have done it, in most instances, they will be tapped out.  In other words how many people or firms does your client come into contact with to make a referral where you can count on it to fuel your growth target month after month, year after year?  Do the math to find out.

Motivation:  Is the person at the client making the referral significantly motivated to proactively say something good about your organization?  For most clients, even though they would love to see you grow, they have their own business to run and thus there is nothing compelling them to talk about your firm unless directly asked or it comes up in conversation.

(a great example of a motivated client is myself with a service called Dropbox.  Just this morning I invited another person I collaborate with to join Dropbox so we could easily share files online.  Over the course of the last few months I have invited about a dozen people, all from different companies to share files with me via Dropbox.  I suspect many of these people will at some point start to share documents with others either inside or outside their organization using Dropbox - in fact I know that some have already.) 

Unless your offer is designed so that your client base personally benefits in a significant way from sharing your offer with others, like me recommending Dropbox, it will be difficult to scale your business if client referrals are your main source of new business.  So the next time somebody asks you how you get new business, don’t be proud if your answer is “client referrals” because that’s a given, you wouldn’t still be in business if you did not get client referrals.

Sometimes It Takes Ten Years To Get That One Valuable Phone Call (If You Don’t Like Your Place In The Value Chain, Don’t Complain - Understand It And Change It)

 

“What’s their problem?”, my friend Gary complained as he stepped away for a few minutes as we caught up for a drink.

(As background, Gary runs a business development firm that is all about “doing the deal”.  Without providing details of Gary or his industry, Gary and his firm bring together buyers and vendors.  Gary and his expert team have spent the last ten years developing relationships with both the buyers and the vendors in this industry so that when a buyer has a particular problem they go to Gary’s firm and he typically will have a relationship with a vendor already in place.  The buyers have built up 10 years of trust in Gary’s firm so they typically sign the contract with his firm as opposed to the vendor who actually will be doing the work).

“What’s the issue Gary”?, I asked upon his return.  “A new vendor of mine who I just gave a large job is complaining about my share of the profit,” he said with disgust.  “We’re doing all the work Gary”, the CFO from the vendor complained to Gary over the phone, “you get one phone call and you’re making the same profit on the deal as us.  It’s not fair!” 

But it wasn’t one inbound phone call.

This is what Gary explained to the vendor’s CFO.  Gary and his team had been deeply embedded in the space for ten years.  They are seen in all the right places.  The senior executives all know his firm and have developed personal relationships.  Gary’s firm has a track record and the buyers are comfortable with Gary and his team.  The more Gary and I talked about it, the more ridiculous the vendor’s complaint felt to us.  After all, with one phone call from Gary, this vendor secured a very large profit and of course the owners of this vendor weren’t going to be doing the work either.  They basically hire contract employees to do the work.  It would be just as ridiculous for those contract employees to complain to the vendor, “we are doing all the work, so why are we getting so little of the profit?” 

So why did the vendor originally sign the agreement with the profit terms that now seem unfair.  In the abstract, the vendor understood that without Gary’s firm there would be no deal and hence no profit.  When it actually happens though, in the moment, when the vendor’s owners hear about the phone call TO GARY, it can be quite painful to “give up” a large share of the profit to somebody who does not perform any of the actual “work”. 

In many cases, it is more valuable to put your firm in position to receive the phone call than it is to actually have your firm do the fulfillment or “work”.  It is how a brand like Nike built their basketball shoe brand, through the endorsement of Michael Jordan and fulfillment through contract factories.   It also reminded me of the conversation I had with Bryan Janeczko from Nu-Kitchen, a weight loss meal delivery service, that Bryan sold in 2008 to Nutri-System.  Nu-Kitchen neither prepares nor delivers the food.  Janeczco realized that the long-term value of Nu-Kitchen was in creating the leading New York area brand focused on weight loss in his category of meal delivery not the fulfillment.

Sometimes, like it is for Gary (and Michael Jordan), it is all the work you do beforehand that leads to a valuable inbound phone call to you.  For others, like Bryan Janeczo (and Nike), it is deciding what part of the offer creates the most value for you and finding the right partner (or partners) to handle the rest.  If you don’t see how your current offer puts you in position to get that one valuable phone call or creates long-term value for your firm perhaps you need to change your offer so you do.

 

If You Want To Be The Queen of Karaoke: You Better Not Just Like The Song You Better Know the Song

 

 

I was at a party a few weeks back where I had the chance to meet The Queen of Karaoke.  “So” I asked,  “how did you get that name?”  “A friend of mine gave it to me because I love to go out for Karaoke and I’m actually quite good”.  “So what makes somebody good at Karaoke” I asked.  “Well, you know how in real estate it’s location location location, the most important part of Karaoke is the song the song the song”.  “Go on”, I asked, realizing I was not talking to an ordinary Karaoke singer but The Queen.  “Most people select songs they like.  What’s even more important is do they know the song.  And by knowing the song I mean knowing all the words as well as the melody.”  “Anything else”, I asked, hoping there was more.  “Yes, you have to practice.  Every song I perform with my friends at Karaoke, I have practiced so I am confident that I know the words, I know the melody, and I know what I will sound like when I am on the bright lights of the karaoke stage.” 

As I was talking with yet another mediocre sales person my mind raced back to what separated The Queen of Karaoke from the others and noticed what Karaoke singers had in common with sales people I have worked with throughout my career. 

All My Friends Are Doing It So I Will Give A Try:  Plenty of 20 something's get into sales because they hear that it’s an easy way to make a lot of money.  Once they get into it, they find out sales is very competitive and typically only the very best earn the big pay checks.  Most of these people seek out or gravitate to an account management position where the selling skills have a much lower bar to meet.

I Love This Song So I Will Sing It:  Some sales people get into sales because they love the idea of being a sales person.  They love the concept of talking with people and “convincing” others to buy what they are selling.  Unfortunately, they spend no time working on their craft and over time they end up not loving selling as much as the years go by.  They gain the worst kind of experience; they get older and think they are worth more because of that experience without actually getting better at what they do.  These karaoke singers, I mean sales people, are the most common in the market today.

Drag Me Up Here Because I Am Out:  This is the sales person who got roped into sales because somebody in the company thought they would be good at or because they knew the company’s products very well.  If the sales person’s heart is not in it, they’re not going to sound very good or sell very much.

I Have A Great Voice:  These sales people are the most frustrating.  They have all the trappings of being world class but refuse to work on their craft.  They rely solely on their gift of language to carry them, but that’s all they have.  They sound great in meetings and some clients love to work with them. Unfortunately, they do not fulfill their destiny, they disappoint in the end. 

The Queen of Karaoke:  Not only do the best sales people, like The Queen of Karaoke, have passion for the art of selling as well as passion for selling the offer of the company they work for, they also are working on their craft when they are not on stage.  They role play, they keep up with what is going within their industry, with their clients, and most importantly they enjoy all parts of the sales process.

If you are looking to build a sales team, Always Be Hiring but more importantly, Always Be Hiring sales people that get “knowing the song is much more than just having a great voice or liking a song”.

“Fresh Eggs” -- If You Think You Have A Commodity Offer, You Probably Do

My wife came home last week very excited.  “What’s going on”, I asked, win the lottery?”  “Even better”, she replied, “FRESH EGGS.”   “Huh, what do you mean.”  “Ondrush Farms didn’t open yet but they posted a sign announcing in big letters - FRESH EGGS -  with a phone number.   So I called them up and just got home with a few dozen eggs.”  “Great, how much did they cost?”  She had no idea.  Eggs for the Silbert household, were no longer a commodity.  

Just look around and you’ll notice that almost all industries that have been supposedly “commoditized”, still have brands that resonate more to the customer than other brands because they refuse to accept the commodity label.

Here are three commodities I experienced in the last week: Airlines, Water, and Pizza.

Airlines

I flew JetBlue for the first time out of JFK.  I live in New Jersey so I almost always fly out of Newark.  Due to JetBlue having a direct flight to Austin, I took the train to the plane from Manhattan which worked out quite well.  JetBlue has a great terminal, friendly staff and has plenty of well documented perks that I finally experienced for myself, including Satellite Radio, DirecTV, and extra legroom that you don’t find on other airlines.  I had heard great things about JetBlue and now I experienced firsthand the subtle difference of flying JetBlue compared to other airlines.  In the last few years and even more so in the past year, the majority of airlines have made the act of flying closer to taking the bus.  I did not feel that way with JetBlue.

Water

While at the JetBlue JFK terminal, I arrived early for the flight and thus decided to eat ahead of my 8pm departure.  As I waited for my food from the Chinese quick service restaurant, I went to select a drink.  There were a number of choices and I narrowed it down to Black Cherry soda which is typically not carried everywhere and water.  As you might expect there was 1 brand of Black Cherry and about half dozen brands of water.  The bottles of water came in all different shapes and sizes with all different price points.  The interesting thing is that as far I could tell all the different brands of water cost more per ounce than not only the black cherry soda but the other drink products as well.  I ended up paying up for the Fiji water, which had a similar price point to the other bottled waters but to me was a premium “bottled water” brand and thus it was easier to justify the ridiculous airport terminal price point.  Some bottled water firms, like Fiji, over the last ten years have figured out how to differentiate the ultimate in commoditized industries… water.

Your Local Pizzaria

In my neighborhood, there are conservatively 20 pizza restaurants within a 7 minute drive of my house.  The majority of them are surviving but there is one, Denino’s, that rises above the others.  It is consistently packed during dinner hours and in fact during some days they do not allow individual slice purchases, they are just too busy.  Denino’s takes pride in their pizza.   A great example is a few days back they brought out a pizza for my family  where part of the crust was partially dented.   As the pizza was being put down on our table, our server informed us they were bringing my family another pizza because of the dented crust.  They did this even though their restaurant was just starting to fill up and thus they could have immediately filled the table. 

The more you look around the more you will find that your industry is less commoditized than plenty of other industries and it is only when you start believing it yourself, can you make the bold moves required to differentiate your offer and your brand from your competitors.

By the way, my wife just got home, all excited again, “what now”, I asked, “Fresh Eggs from Ondrush Farms again”?  “Fresh Corn”, she replied with a smile (this time knowing the corn was 3 times as expensive as the corn from our local super market).

What We Can Learn From Verizon FiOS About Getting Clients To Switch To You (Even When The Switch Is Painful)

 

I finally did it.  After considering switching from Comcast Triple Play (Phone, TV, Internet) to Verizon FiOS Triple Play, I spent a good portion of my Friday, including the evening, making the switch.

The reason it took me so long to switch, Verizon FiOS, has been available in my neighborhood for a couple years, was I knew it would be painful, and I was right.

Eliminate The Pain Or Create An Opportunity

I Had No Pain: Everything was working with Comcast

As all business owners know, there are two reasons customers seek out your offer.  Either they are in pain or they are seeking an opportunity.  Any time a customer switches either due to a customer support issue or some misalignment in perceived value of an offer, they are switching to eliminate a pain. 

It is ironic that my wife a few years back had a previous bad experience with Verizon local phone service which is why we originally moved to the Comcast Triple Play service.  We switched to avoid the pain of Verizon local phone service support and broken commitments.

On the other hand, Verizon FiOS is the classic opportunity driven offer.  Almost all the time customers switch from a legacy offer like Comcast for the opportunity to do something fundamentally different and exciting.

I switched from Comcast not to remove a pain but for the opportunity of getting FiOS, basically a next generation communications service (multi-room DVR is a great example)

Get The Switching Cost As Close To Zero As You Can

It Was Expensive To Switch: I speculated it would take a good portion of one day for me to be home

Unfortunately, I was right.  Pat, an extremely competent technician from Verizon FiOS, arrived at around 10am and left around 5pm.  In addition, a colleague of Pat’s was there for about half the time as well.  During the course of the day, I was left without internet service for portions of the day.  Also, I had plenty of small and large batches of time working through issues with them.  Then the unexpected, which of course I expected hit, just after Pat had left.  Verizon includes their own wireless router so I no longer used mine and so my two wireless printers (1 laser Black and White, 1 multi-purpose mainly for color) were no longer on the network.  This took another few hours of my time as well as some anguish as I worked through it.  In addition, the next day, Saturday, I had to spend a couple of hours returning the equipment to Comcast.

Verizon FiOS, as best they could, minimized the cost on my end.  Even though they needed two trucks and had at least a day and half of labor costs (conservatively if $100/hour @10 hours, that would be $1000), their fee for the install was $0.

Why would Verizon FiOS waive a thousand dollars of labor?  I wanted Verizon FiOS, I did not want all the sh*t I would have to go through to get it and they knew it.  Verizon FiOS wanted another recurring client and realized that any upfront costs they would get from me would pale in comparison to the monthly revenue.

Verizon FiOS minimized costs on things I did not want, even though it cost them hard dollars, in order to get what they did want, another recurring revenue customer to grow their long term valuation.  Nicely done!