Be on time to your meetings.

Today, my uncle called me late in the evening to his desolate Juice shop. Not many people bought juice on winter evenings. It is not a simple juice shop though; they sold almost anything that people might buy, primarily he called it a juice shop, but it is far more than that. It is as if my uncle noted down what people asked him on a daily basis on a cigarette wrapper and stocked them the very next day without any question. The juice shop now sold candles, chocolates, and even tissue papers. Demand meets supply. He hates to say no to any customer.

  He also sold products that did not bring him much profit, but sales anyway. I asked him why he should fill space with low profit margin goods. He explained, “Selling a Cadbury’s Diary milk will hardly give me a rupee per piece, but I get a customer, and I sell that meaningless product hoping that next time he will buy the juice that has a ten rupee margin.”     

  Do we have a lesson here? Yes you bet. You don’t make a sale by selling your biggest product that your user has no use for. You make sales by selling the smaller things that the user needs at that instant. Over a period of time, when he really wants that big product, he will definitely choose you over your competitor. To be more precise, business is more about building relationships than about selling fruit juices.

  What are the implications of this lesson in our daily life?  Small things build trust. For example, being to a meeting on time builds trust. The meeting itself may not be that important, but sticking to the clock even on a meaningless meeting would turn out to be important in the long run. Once you have built that trust, you will be trusted with higher responsibilities that demands more trust and of course equivalent rewards. So better be on time to your meetings.