I took my daughter to work this past week. She wanted cheese pizza for lunch so I took to one of the pizza joints in the Pioneer Square district of Seattle. There are two pizza places very close to each other only a few block from our offices. I decided to visit the one I’ve not tried before.

As we walked in the door we were greeted by a man who was helping other customers. He said, “We have great pizza!”. My first thought was this guy is a bit crazy, but he seemed so sincere. He took my order of two pieces of cheese pizza. As he grabbed two slices that had just come out of the oven he said, “You are in for some good pizza”.

And you know what? He was right. The pizza was good. But what made the visit memorable was that his man (he could have been the owner) was thrilled with his product and wanted to share that with his customers. And compared to the other pizza place around the corner, this man seemed to be enjoying his job! Have you ever done business with some who clearly hates his or her job? Or the employee who starts to mop the floor under your feet while you’re still eating so they can get out of there the minute the store closes? It’s not right to put chairs up on tables when you’re open for another 30 minutes.

When I shop at Target or Starbucks I can count on running into employees that are happy to see me. They greet me as I walk in the store and say thank you when I depart. They smile. They look me in the eyes. They guide me to the product I’m looking for.

So maybe this guy serving pizza is on to something. Do your customers see you as someone that’s genuinely happy when they walk into your door? If so, you probably don’t have to worry much about that competitor around the corner.

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Jason at 37Signals is impressed with how Apple works hard at selling its employees on their message. He states: “Apple sells Apple to its employees as strongly  as it sells Apple to its customers”.

Does your company sell to you? Do they get the message in? Few companies I’ve worked for do this well.

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I’ve been a loyal State Farm insurance customer for over 15 years. I still carry my home insurance policy with them. But I was surprised to see such a wide variance in car insurance pricing. Here’s is sample of quotes I received from three different insurance companies:

Cost to insure 2000 Honda Odyssey and 2002 BMW 325i. No moving violations for both insured drivers.

State Farm – $180/month
GMAC – $133/month
Response – $82/month

I switched to Response at the first of April and wouldn’t you know, I made my first claim today when someone scraped the tail end of the BMW. So far they have been very responsive to my claim. So far so good. Maybe it does pay to shop around.

Sampling of prices at the ballpark (Safeco Field, Seattle):

1. Upper deck seat – $10
2. Foot long hotdog – $6
3. Small drink – $3.75
4. Cotton Candy – $5.50
5. Kids baseball cap – $14

It’s not hard to spot where the real money is made.

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.

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One of my coworkers sent me this picture. I’d like one for our home.

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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One of the coolest things about Twitter is that people share sites they come across. Scoble mentioned Dave Werner’s website today and I spent the next 30 minutes looking at his projects. This is one of the best personal websites I’ve seen.

I really enjoyed the “Impact” and “Cadence” links although everything I clicked on was interesting.

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