Snakes and ladders

Some years ago we got a call from a client who had many stores. A client that fitted the profile of the rare group of companies that we actively seek out. They were brilliant and we were thrilled to be in the running for something that amazing.

I travelled to Lois Trichard as it was known back then and met with the powers that be and I was very impressed with the operation and their incredible attention to detail.
They had a training Store setup that was so amazing that I returned a few weeks later with another client who wanted to learn from them. Their procedural manuals were better than some of the texts being used by the formal business training college

After endless meetings, we reached an impasse where they described a deal breaker request that apparently they absolutely could not survive without. This was a disaster as we didn't have anything like that. We offered to create it and to this end, they sent us the developers of their existing applications. This was done so they could explain what exactly was required.

When Penny arrived at our offices with one of her developers we were worried that she might not be too forthcoming with information, seeing as she had lost the client to us, but as it turned out she and her partner were surprisingly helpful. Within the space of one morning, I understood what they were on about and had a fair idea of how to solve the problems.

Over time the deal went South and we didn't end up going ahead with the business. Having invested so much time and effort on the project we were a little sore, but we moved on in the hope that the experience would make us wiser.

The "Penny sliding scale price matrix" turned out to be worth more then the deal would have ever made for us.

Exponentially more.

Over the past decade I have lost count of the times when a client made an unreasonable, and often impossible, request that was easily solved within minutes using the Penny method.

We have used that trick in one form or another in many countries and in many currencies, and every time we did, clients were always amazed at how we were able to solve complex problems within seconds.

Looking back it occurs to me that this is another example of a seemingly random event that shaped our future. An event that looked at the time like the snake in snakes and ladders,  turned out, in the long term to be a ladder.

The second thing that comes to mind if that I need to track down this Penny, and offer my thanks at the very least, for her unintended contribution to our success.

The path to our success is littered with chance meetings that could not be predicted.

M Parak
Aug 2018