Big Mistakes as Big Opportunities

by Graham Denton

Harry Beckwith, the author of Selling the Invisible, tells a great story about the value of timely correction. A busy executive walks into the men's wear section of Dayton's, a Minneapolis department store, to pick up a jacket he ordered weeks before. It's not ready. But before he can start to complain, the clerk, an eager young man named Roger, rushes into a back room, flinging a harried "Be right back" over his shoulder. He returns in a flash and says breathlessly, "Alterations will do it right now. It will be ready in five minutes. I promise."

The executive reacts with surprise, pleasure, and a slight sense of indebtedness to Roger, whose extra effort on his behalf is, to say the least, unusual. While he's waiting for the jacket, he browses through the department, and in the few minutes that it takes for the alterations to be completed, he picks out a second jacket, priced at $575, a pair of $110 black slacks, and -- to complete the ensemble -- a $55 tie. Roger's frenzied dash to alterations results in a $740 sale, plus -- when Beckwith decides to relay the tale -- a whole bunch of free publicity for his happy employer.

But there's more to this story, Beckwith points out, than an acknowledgment that outstanding service stands out. A corollary moral is that outstanding service doesn't necessary mean zero defects. In this case, the department store's service actually had a "gross defect" -- the failure to deliver the garment on the date it had promised. "But Dayton's profited more from its mistake than it would have profited from perfect quality and zero defects -- at least $740 more." It profited because Roger's customer understood that to err is human. It's what you do after the mistake is made that can set you apart from every other fallible human -- or fallible organization.

Big mistakes offer big opportunities.