I learned a valuable lesson today that reinforced Seth Godin’s premise that mass and size matters. Promoting a customer service event I have found that many small organizations jumped at the chance to receive world class training in customer service. They paid quickly for the day long opportunity to be exposed to leaders in customer service. One of the benefits of my bringing in the training organization was a free 90 minute workshop for an educational partner. Value over $10,000. Let my partner know this when I pitched the opportunity to my board a month ago.
Guess what I learned half way through the promotional period? The original educational partner doesn’t think anyone can reschedule themselves to take advantage of the opportunity. Not deterred, I called the county school system. I had mentioned this to one of their vice chairman’s several weeks earlier and she was excited. When I spoke with her today, I asked if we could use on of her facilities and we would do the invites and marketing to the eligible teachers and administrators. What I got was a request to meet and talk about it next week before we proceed. So we will have a planning meeting 6 days form now. It’s Mardi Gras time around here.
A unique opportunity is a problem for a large organization. As Seth Godin explains, they don’t like special orders or niche markets. My world class training opportunity for a large school system is definitely a special order. I hope it works out as I am trying not to imagine both educational partners turning down a chance to focus on customer service. Especially since the tribes are paying for the same information the day before. Weird!
Comments