More paperwork…Forgotten stuff…

More paperwork…we don’t like

We all dislike writing service reports. They take too long to prepare and the chef who we need to sign off is too busy to do much more than scribble his name. What’s worse, he’s unlikely to pay much heed to the suggestions you’ve made about problems that are beyond your scope, or perhaps even your control.

But when you’re challenged by a competitor, or if a new buyer arrives and wants to know why he should keep you versus the vendor he’d used in his last gig, it’s a very different matter. Confronted with that problem, we suddenly wish we’d been more diligent about writing them.

If we had, we could produce a stack of those reports for the last year to document all the things you’d done to ensure great results and costs, as well as neglected issues you’d highlighted – but that were either neglected or ignored.

Those reports are also the perfect tool to demonstrate the training you’ve provided. And just in case that chef you had to wrangle into signing has (not surprisingly) turned “state’s witness” against you, there’s now proof of your performance with his signatures.

Admittedly, PITA as they may be to write, they can be worth their weight in real money to counter those false accusations, or faulty memories of everything you’ve done for them.

Forgotten stuff…And resurrecting it

The old saying, “I’ve forgotten more than you’ll ever know” might be a bit flawed – at least in terms of its direction. Truth be known, just maybe we’re the ones who’re on the verge of having forgotten more than we ever knew!

And that’s not entirely unjustified either. Given all the balls we have to juggle, occasionally forgetting some of the important knowledge we’ve accumulated, lessons we’ve learned and even tasks we meant to tackle yesterday is certainly understandable.

But that doesn’t absolve us from realizing that there’s the flip side to the forgetting coin. And that’s remembering to keep that reservoir of life’s lessons fresh and available.

It might mean revisiting (or relearning) a skill that we’ve allowed to fade. Or it might involve disciplining ourselves to use that skill that we have allowed to drift – like resharpening our once very successful cold call sales technique – or our basic electrical knowledge.

Yep, remembering even some of what we’re forgotten might be the best thing we can do to better our business and ensure that we’re every bit as successful as we all hope to be.