I currently have 358 people in my database; I'm fairly ruthless with deleting people that I haven't talked to in 3-4 years, or who aren't nice, so that's a pretty realistic picture of my number of clients. However, the heart of my busines is the 100 or so serious players that will, year after year, spend $500-1000 per on piano maintenance, and are addicted to my tuning and voicing and regulating skills. This is yet another inspiration I got from Ed McMorrow: find good people that are fanatic about their instruments, and who understand you get what you pay for, and trust you, and you'll make a good living forever. I also work one day a week for the high-end piano store in LA, tweaking their good pianos, a wonderful source of income and referrals. Because I really like people, and have a generally excellent, quasi-intimate relationship with my clients, they really appreciate a call from me.....sending cards is, sadly, way beyond my ADD-infected organizational skills----I'm in awe of you guys that are that organized. It takes a tremendous amount of energy and focus for me just to return all my phone calls and show up on time, which I now do about 95% of the time----but it's taken me years of struggle to get to that level of reliability.....and I honor my long-term clients for putting up with my time-management challenges. It's all about relationships; any successful businessperson will tell you that. Best, David Andersen >In a message dated Sat, 7 Sep 2002 2:42:59 PM Eastern Standard Time, >ilvey@sbcglobal.net writes: > >> I like the idea and have some PTG postcards but I have yet to >> give it a try...what do you do with those that don't >> reply? >> David I. >> > >I don't do anything. If the customer, for what ever reason, decides not to >have me tuner the piano, that's his/her problem. Perhaps that customer has >moved, gotten another tuner, or simply doesn't feel the piano needs to be >tuned. But I'm not going to chase after them to get the work. > >I don't take them out of my computer either, (or throw away the card with >he information, if you're still keeping record the old fashioned way), >until I get word that he/she is no longer in the area. I have had >customers come back to me after 4 or 6 years, when they finally realized >that the cheaper tuner didn't give them what they wanted. > >Wim
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