I Have A Pen

Yes, I know. Not a very exciting headline to be sure.

Here on the Gold Coast (as in many places) businesses receive a promotional pen from promotional companies every 4-5 weeks. Different companies send different pens. These free pens are personalised with our business name and phone number.

Along with the pen comes an order form to order bulk numbers of the pen (with company details printed on).

The pens are generally of good quality and just before Christmas I sent in an order for 100 (from memory).

They Duly Arrived

Our promotional pens duly arrived about 2 weeks later.

But the pens we received are far smaller than the promotional example pen the company sent. The pens we received aren’t as robust (they fall apart pretty easily) or as heavy as the example one we based our buying decision on.

But Here’s the Thing…..

Here’s the thing……by the time I noticed the pens we received were a lot different to the pen we thought we would receive a lot of time had passed (actually I only just noticed it 6 weeks after delivery).

By that time we’d distributed a lot of pens to clients and friends. It was too late to do anything about it.

And Here’s The Other Thing…..

And here’s the other thing…..I’ve just received another promotional pen in the mail. And it’s a great looking pen. Very slick indeed. But I won’t buy any. Not because it’s the same company (I’m not sure – I actually can’t remember who I bought from before), but because it’s the same industry.

I now don’t trust the industry. I expect them all to under-deliver.

And when I look back and read that, it’s completely illogical. This pen company might be better. They might do what they promise. They might even exceed expectations.

But my buying barriers are up and wary of pens!

1 Thing to Do

But for me to buy from them I’d have to do 1 thing.

I’d have to check out that these guys aren’t the same company as the previous one. And it’s too much of a hassle to do that – I’d have to chase down the old invoice and check the company against the ‘bad’ company.

And as a busy person I don’t have time for that.

With me, just like every single customer you have, you have to make everything as easy as possible for me to buy. Remove every single barrier to buying that you can. Because otherwise people just won’t be bothered buying from you.

(Psssst: Want to buy 45 pens??!)