Taking a step backwards

Last week we had an important customer who asked me to send a price quotation for some products.  Within two hours and several interruptions of receiving his email, I hit "send", happy that I had been able to get it done the morning of his request.  
 
I went on about my day, without seeing that email that my quote had "bounced back" with a message that "The Internet Community" rejected it because something within my message matched a "spam profile".

Fast forward 27 hours to when our customer called asking where the quote was at.  He was understsndably concerned because he needed it to complete a project and put closure on his week.

I tried a bunch of tricks, including sending a jpg screen shot of the message, sending from a different address, changing the subject,  etc, etc.  I  even posted it to this blog and tried to give him the blog address.  I panicked.  I am was on the phone with the customer three times leting him know that I was trying.


I will be scrubbing the egg from my face for a couple more days. It is egg that immediately ran there when he suggested to me that "Rich, maybe you should take a step backwards in technology and use the fax."  Done.  Problem solved!



How often do we all need to take a step back and remember that the old ways still have merit and a place in our world.



Our flagship product, foam markers for agricultural sprayers, has been largely replaced by GPS based guidance systems.  Yet, we continue to sell a lot of units of our "foam based" systems because commercial spraying businesses remember that sometimes  new technology  (GPS)  fails and you need a fallback technology.  We have made that the center of our whole marketing plan for 15 years.  

Guess I forgot my own "wisdom".

Thanks A.G.

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