Morgan J. McArthur, DVM for The Veterinarian

22 February 99

It’s been over two years since I’ve seen my barber and I couldn’t believe our conversation as he worked over my patchy pate the other day.

“Are you still a vet? snipsnipsnip… I remember you came here from America a couple of years ago… snipsnip combtwirl… I cut your hair when you first got here, remember?”

I was gobsmacked! Since I’ve shifted house, it’s been two years since I last sat in his chair! He’s seen a zillion heads of hair since then. Wow, does he have some sort of special memory talent?

I don’t know. What’s significant is that his recall sent a clear and powerful signal to me, his customer: YOU’RE IMPORTANT.

The man wielding scissors and comb didn’t learn that skill in barber school. He knows that in six weeks’ time each of his customers will need a haircut again and there is a lot of competition out there. He knows that if retaining customers depends on shear talent alone (pun intended) then business is a competitive free-for-all. However, my barber friend knows he can be a cut above his competition by honouring the Relationship Rule:

the one who cares more for customers wins more customers.

In a business like his, and ours, where a livelihood depends on working with one customer at a time, that rule is golden. Little things like acknowledging and remembering people are big things. To them.

Anyone who depends on repeat business should understand The Rule. You’ll find some version of it in Dale Carnegie’s timeless classic How to Win Friends and Influence People (Read this book. Again and again.). Contemporary business authors call it things like one-to-one marketing and networking.

Simply put, success is still mostly a relationship game.

Let me bring this closer to home with a simple question. Did you have vet school classmates like I did whose rudest realisation after graduation was that their animal patients didn’t write the cheques?

If the answer to that was yes, I have two more questions. Have they since figured out that the two-legged animals are as important as the four-legged ones? If not, are their businesses doing well?

The difference between a good haircut and a bad one is about two weeks. But the difference between a good barber and a great one can be two words: YOU’RE IMPORTANT. Learn from folks whose people skills have to be as good or better than their technical skills. Become a student of what works well for them and adapt it to your own situation and style. The Relationship Rule will put you a cut above your competition.

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