Why are small bussiness willing to pay more for lower quality?
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@Carnival-Boy said:
I also prefer to deal with people I know, so will often engage with local companies that are owned by or employ friends of mine. That's not because they're in the same golf club, it's because I trust my friends more than strangers and trust is the most important thing. That makes it more likely that they're local, although I'd employ NTG because I'm kinda friends with @scottalanmiller and @Minion-Queen and they're 6000 miles away. So it's not a local for local sake thing, it's just that most of my friends are local.
We are "local" in the digital sense
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Argh, I hate that I have to constantly switch between these two browsers while working. So confusing.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Many were just wives running a tax shelter for their husbands, it was a hobby and had zero hopes of ever making a penny, that wasn't the goal. Some were there to make money, but only just enough to get by.
Very jealous of this.
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@scottalanmiller said:
This I agree with, in many cases. Don't avoid companies based on size, generally, or only within reason. But I think that's part of the whole "focus on business factors" argument. Don't seek out SMBs, but don't avoid them either.
There are three things I find attractive about SMBs.
- They often don't employ salesmen. So when you initially engage with them you often talk directly to a technical guy (who often owns the company). I don't really get on with salesmen, for whatever reason.
- We are often a big customer of theirs. This gives us leverage. If we're a $100k a year customer, an SMB will often work hard to retain us. But for a big company, we're irrelevant, and often get treated that way.
- They seem to have a lower level of staff turnover. At big companies, I seem to get a new account manager every 6 months, at small companies I have often been dealing with the same people for 10 years.
The exception is buying IT hardware. I buy from big companies because they carry stock and benefit from economies of scale. And a box is a box. It really doesn't matter whether that box is coming from next door or from Scotland, it will still arrive at the same time in my factory.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
We have a butcher in our village and I used to buy all my meat from him. It's about a hundred yards from my house. But then a rather good supermarket (Waitrose), opened up a mile away. The problem is the meat from our butcher isn't actually that good, and I prefer the supermarkets, so I've been buying a lot more of my meat from there instead. I always feel really guilty whenever I run into the butcher in the village. The butcher knows I'm buying my meat elsewhere.
I feel bad because he's a decent bloke and I feel bad because supermarkets are taking over the country and we're running out of independent butchers.
On the other hand, his meat isn't that good, so it's not my fault.
The question is... Did you tell him why you don't shop with him anymore? It's possible that if he drastically increases his quality, even if his prices are higher, he'll have a better, more profitable business.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
I've tended to get better service from SMBs than big companies, so that's one reason for preferring SMBs to be our partners/vendors. And it can be harder to connect with non-local SMBs, simply because they don't tend to operate or advertise outside of their locality. So that's one of the reasons why a lot of my vendors are local.
I also prefer to deal with people I know, so will often engage with local companies that are owned by or employ friends of mine. That's not because they're in the same golf club, it's because I trust my friends more than strangers and trust is the most important thing. That makes it more likely that they're local, although I'd employ NTG because I'm kinda friends with @scottalanmiller and @Minion-Queen and they're 6000 miles away. So it's not a local for local sake thing, it's just that most of my friends are local.
This is kinda funny after my situation yesterday, where my friends, who are both IT types were telling me to waste money keeping an expensive solution simply because it's cost was nothing compared to our gross profit... yeah Keep friends as friends, and trusted information sources as trusted information sources - sure there can be some overlap... but not always.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Not being a video guy - I agree with CB, they look fine to me.
And I agree with everything else CB mentioned.
I'm not a video guy but they look like low budget late 1990s infomercials to me.
This is honestly lower quality then you'd get from good Highschool interns.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Not being a video guy - I agree with CB, they look fine to me.
And I agree with everything else CB mentioned.
I'm not a video guy but they look like low budget late 1990s infomercials to me.
This is honestly lower quality then you'd get from good Highschool interns.
But it works.....
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@IRJ said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Not being a video guy - I agree with CB, they look fine to me.
And I agree with everything else CB mentioned.
I'm not a video guy but they look like low budget late 1990s infomercials to me.
This is honestly lower quality then you'd get from good Highschool interns.
But it works.....
That's the problem with a lot of business things.... "it works" for things that are highly subjective isn't really a qualifier. If the question is "does the video play?" then yes, I believe that it does. If the question is "was this a good decision to use this guy" or "does this drive the intended business" then you have to dig in a lot more and we can't really answer if the final result "worked" or not.
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Darn it, again!
