Why do we stupidly avoid keeping it simple?
Posted June 18th, 2008 by Jason

I’ve got a friend who owns a courier run and he could teach us all a lesson on the importance of keeping business simple. His clients love him and have total loyalty toward him - and for good reason.

It’s so easy for business owners (and especially for us with internet based businesses), to overcomplicate systems, processes and technology. We end-up getting buried under the huge mountain that we create and lose sight of the systems and processes that matter greatly to our customers and build real value in our business.

It also happens frequently in sport. How many sports teams have you witnessed that decided to forget the basics of the game and get fancy, throwing 50/50 passes and taking large risks? They think "if we can just get the ball to our star player he’s bound to score so we don’t need to stick to our simple game plan and structure." And what tends to happen when teams forget about the game plan and structure - yip, it can get messy and luck is generally needed to win!

Well, my friend has a foolproof plan that he implements only once per year. His secret is to have his wife bake a few cakes and biscuits and buy a few pizzas. He then delivers a totally unexpected morning tea shout to the people that normally receive his daily parcel deliveries. To say they are pleasantly surprised is an understatement and word quickly spreads throughout each organisation - I mean, who expects a "postman" to shout a business!

Now, I spoke to my friend the other day and he said that the courier company that he contracts to wanted to change his run and give some of his clients to another driver. Well, this didn’t go over well with the businesses when they were told their courier was going to change. The CEO of one of the largest wrote a ’strong’ letter explaining that they would immediately choose another courier company if my friend was replaced by another driver.

This was quite a shock to my friend’s courier company as they couldn’t believe how strong the bond could be between a courier driver and the businesses he delivered parcels to. The courier company’s management found-out later that my friend was often invited to official company events and regularly sent gifts and new products such was the loyalty that he had built.

It cost my friend a bit of time and a couple of hundred dollars every year but the rewards were huge and all from the simple execution of a simple process!

Thanks for reading and please leave a comment.