Month: April 2007

Two ways to sell a water heater

Our water heater went out over the weekend. Luckily, Kim noticed a small leak on Sunday evening and I was able to cut off the water and drain the heater before it caused major damage to our basement.

I figured that I’d need to have it replaced since it had been installed back in 1989. So I called the number listed on the bright yellow sticker on the heater. Since it was nearly 1 am I didn’t expect someone to answer the phone, but I was able to leave a message. I received a call that morning saying I could expect someone to stop by, take a look at the heater, and give me a quote to replace it. Two men showed up and spent less than two minutes looking around. One of the men pulled out a black, three ringed binder, walked over to me and opened it to a page that listed a 50 gallon water heater. Without giving me any explanation of what needed to be done, he said they could do the job for $2500. I asked a few questions, and could quickly tell they were there to give me a quote and get the heater installed. They were not there to answer questions. I either needed a new heater and they would install it now, or they would move onto the next appointment. I asked if there were any other less expensive options and he said, “No, this is it”.

Well, I decided to get another quote before spending over two grand. This time I went to Yahoo Yellow pages and looked for a plumbing company located in our city of Auburn. On about the third page I found such a company and made a phone call to a very kind lady who listened to my problem and even gave me a ballpark quote. She said a guy would show up in a few hours which he did. Only this time, the guy spent about fifteen minutes inspecting the broken water heater and its surroundings. He took notes, he moved things around, he removed the front panel to the heater to check the pilot light, he made sure my water and gas had been turned off. He asked to see my main water shut-off to the house. He then checked the water pressure from an outside tap. He recognized I had very high water pressure (110 PSI) instead of a normal 70 PSI. He then tracked down the valve that had gone out that was located right off the water main coming into the garage from the street. All the time this man was explaining to me what he was doing which took time. He wasn’t just there to give me a quote and bolt.

After nearly an hour of inspecting the water heater and various water sources, he wrote up a detailed quote. He walked me through every line item on the quote and gave me several options for taking care of the problem.

So here are two examples of how to run a business. The first business was all about creating a quote and attempting to close the sell as soon as possible. They didn’t have the time or the desire to explain anything to me. The second business hired people who seem to genuinely care about how they treat their potential customers. They took the time to explain the process of installing a new water heater. They gave me several options from which to chose. They answered my questions.

We now have a new water heater and, I’m sure you can guess which business we chose to do the work.

Microsoft – From the perspective of ISP owner

Matt Heaton writes a well-thought post about dealing with Microsoft in the ISP space. I worked for an ISP in Seattle that would never have considered adding Microsoft software to our data center. It was considered too insecure and too expensive. But that was 10 years ago.

But, as Matt writes, many of his customers are asking for a hosted Microsoft Exchange solution. It appears Microsoft has addressed, at least to some degree, the security issues but not the cost issues.

(Matt is the president of Bluehost. That company that hosts this blog)

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Guess what’s in the box

I paid Fry’s a visit today in search of a new keyboard for myself. Actually a new keyboard for Kim whose keyboard I took apart and pilfered a few parts from to fix my own. Luckily, she’s in Utah till Monday evening which gives me a few days to find a suitable replacement.

I found the keyboard section at Fry’s. I noticed that the display keyboards are not a good indicator of where one would find the boxed equivalent. Several times I found the keyboard I was after but it came bundled with a wireless mouse, jacking up the price.

I eventually located a keyboard that should please Kim. But it wouldn’t be a Fry’s visit without noticing at least one unintentionally funny sign. In the keyboard section, just below a very large stack of boxed keyboards that had been stripped of outer box so you couldn’t tell what was inside was this sign: “Please do not open the boxes”.

X-ray vision required.


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Send yourself reminders with Jott

Jott is another example of a simple yet brilliant idea that when you hear about it, you immediately kick yourself in the butt for not coming up the idea first.

In short, here’s how Jott works:

1. You call Jott
2. You speak your reminder
3. Jott transcribes your message
4. Jott sends email containing reminder

You can also send messages to groups of people via Jott, but I’ve only been using it to send myself reminders. Today I was in my car and I heard a song I wanted to download when I got home. I called Jott with the name of the song. When I got home, the email was waiting for me.

Without Jott I’d be sitting here listening to “True Colors” instead of “You’ve got another thing coming”.

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Sometimes it’s better to ship nothing

Seth Godin says it’s better to ship nothing than it would be to ship an inferior product.

I think back to a few companies I’ve worked for who were in the position of making a go/no go decision on a product. I can only think of one instance where the decision was made to not ship. And looking back it turned out to be the best decision.

It takes some guts to not ship. You have invested in a lot of time, money and resources into the project. The last thing you want to do is kill it. But even worse would be to ship a product that damages your reputation and hurts future business.