Pay attention to the details

Let’s suppose that you’re in a restaurant, and you see a bug scurry across the floor.  Is your first instinct to think that you’ve seen the only bug in the place?

Not likely.

Instead, your mind goes to imagining the many other details that they’ve gotten wrong – and in the end, you might never return because of what that one insect triggered for you.

But today’s post isn’t about cleanliness.  It’s about getting the details right, because of the impressions it leaves with your customers.

I got a promotional flyer yesterday, looking to sell me various opportunities to grow my business.  But what I saw instead was a whole raft of mistakes in grammar, spelling, and punctuation.  They even misspelled the name of one of their products.

Yes, I’m more of a geek about this kind of stuff.  I notice things that others might not, and they annoy me.  But just as 90% of your customers might not notice a bug on the floor, you have to worry about the 10% that will.  This single piece of paper contained at least ten errors – I stopped counting – so the odds that someone will notice are much higher than just one single mistake.  I can understand how someone can neglect to punctuate the last sentence of a paragraph.  But five?  Now it’s looking like they threw this together in sixty seconds.

The fix isn’t hard.  If you know you’re weak at putting out great copy, have someone else review it for you.  You’ll probably find someone who will do it for free.  But don’t spend all that money creating a great logo, and then blow your momentum by the text you put around it.

OK, end of rant.  Have a wonderful 2011!

Carl Dierschow
Small Fish Business Coaching
Fort Collins, Colorado