How a mango-seller revealed to me the secret sauce to a successful business!
Life is full of wonderful people and opportunities to learn. If we keep our eyes open and brain receptive even a poor local mango-seller can teach us something worth following. This is one such story of meeting a man who taught me a great lesson about consumer satisfaction.
Credits : The Internet
Our family was once traveling to Lavasa — It is a place near Pune, Maharashtra, India. Famous among tourists. Luckily it was the season of the king of fruits: Mango.
The road to Lavasa is considered to be the best road for a ride as the beauty is breathtaking. Moreover, you also find many tapris ( stalls) offering different items for eating like — Corn, Peanuts, Bhakri ( Type of bread) etc. Since it was the mango season, there were local villagers selling mangoes.
Being a mango lover family, we decided to stop at one of the stalls and asked for the mangoes. After the villager told us the rates, we were so excited to have the mangoes that we thought how great it would be to eat the mangoes on the roadside only. We ask him for a sample and we liked it. We asked him if he could please cut the mango and serve us. He agreed! To my surprise!
We wanted more, so we asked him if he could cut few more for us. Now this time his mode of reaction changed and he got furious saying “Is this the only work I have? I am not supposed to serve it like it to you. You can cut it yourself. It incurs labor charges” We were not happy by his behavior and decided not to buy more and leave.
Our hunt for mango was still on until we found another seller. We asked him the same question. Should he be willing to serve us by cutting it here? You won’t believe what happened next. He was living near his house, he sent his kid to his home to bring plates. He cut the mangoes and served us one by one telling the story about the mangoes. All over anger for the last salesman was lost and we too were lost in the taste of his mangoes. We, the family of 4 had more than a dozen mangoes there and bought another 2 dozens from him. Indeed we both ( the seller and our family) were happy. The man didn’t charge a penny for cutting the mangoes.
Should the first seller behaved properly and have asked for cutting charges, I assume we wouldn’t have minded to pay him.
“There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down simply by spending his money somewhere else.” ~ Sam Walton, Founder of Walmart and Sam’s Club
That experience taught me how important it is to treat your customers well and take care of their satisfaction. And when you do so, customer don’t even mind paying a little extra. Like we wouldn’t have minded paying the second seller for cutting the mangoes, in fact, we wouldn’t have minded to paying him even extra for the service and love he showed.
“The single most important thing is to make people happy. If you are making people happy, as a side effect, they will be happy to open up their wallets and pay you.” ~ Derek Sivers, Founder CD Baby
Please feel free to share your stories or views about this one!
Cheers!! Happy Business!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ameya Agrawal (22 years) is a Motivational Speaker, Author, Budding Entrepreneur, Engineer. He is a frequent speaker and invitee at various institutes to share his experiences. He received critical acclaims from the best and the brightest in the leadership development field like Dr. Radhakrishnan Pillai, Hon. Vishwanath Karad etc.
A Leap Within ( A book on Self- Motivation ) by Ameya Agrawal
He was also conferred with a National Record for being the ‘ The Youngest Engineering Student To Write A Book On Self –Motivation’
With an entrepreneurial mindset and leadership skills, Ameya loves to push his limits and explore new challenges. He loves to interact and share with people, especially youth for developing a healthy, strong, positive, self-motivated and visionary leadership of tomorrow.
Get motivated with Ameya. Whatsapp on +91 9158715200 to join his mission ‘LYRICS OF SUCCESS’
