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Standing Out In A Crowd

Standing Out In A Crowd

Apropos of “Consulting Wisdom” posted here recently, life imitates art.

A guy named Todd ordered two of my books in the Ultimate Consultant series. The publisher, Jossey-Bass, has chosen to change the format from hard cover to soft cover, which is the publisher’s right. There are no other changes—the jacket art, contents, and so on are all the same—except there is a difference of about 8 pages because of the larger page size on the paperback.

Todd writes me on receipt of the books and points out that my web site describes them as hard cover, and of slightly longer length. This is absolutely true, since I forgot to change the description when the publisher changed the format.

Then old Todd goes on to tell me that “there is a significant difference between hard cover and soft cover, and there are a dozen fewer pages.” He demands an explanation, immediately, and accuses me of “fraud.” (The price of the book has not changed at retail from the publisher, so he was not overcharged.)

I told him that Todd was a tad anal-retentive, and asked: Did he bother to appreciate the content? Humorless, as anal-retentive people always are, he told me he had just opened the package, how could he have read them? (He apparently immediately felt the cover, however.)

If you want to stand out in a crowd, just hold your ground. The crowd will recede around you. Todd is representative of some of the people you are “competing” against. I really wouldn’t worry about it. He’ll be too outraged when a prospect has told him he has an hour, but only provided 58.6 minutes.

You can’t make this stuff up. And he’s expecting to help others?

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

Written by

Alan Weiss is a consultant, speaker, and author of over 60 books. His consulting firm, Summit Consulting Group, Inc., has attracted clients from over 500 leading organizations around the world.

Comments: 11

  • Dave

    April 4, 2009

    Oh my! I didn’t even bother to look.

    Customers like this I tell “if you don’t like the item, just return the item for a full refund”

    I had one who thought that meant they could keep the item AND get the refund. Sigh…

  • Shama Hyder

    April 6, 2009

    This really made me laugh out loud Alan!

    I had a guy email me letting me know that my ebook seemed to offer EXACTLY the content he was looking for – but 27 dollars was extremely overpriced for an ebook. I mean-come on-it’s not printed.

    What can do you with such clowns? Ah yes-blog!

    = )

  • Todd Anderson

    April 8, 2009

    Some Todd’s don’t make it easy to be a Todd.

  • Dave Gardner

    April 10, 2009

    Alan…you’d better hope Todd doesn’t sign up for the Mentor Program…Dave

  • Graham Franklin

    April 10, 2009

    Please don’t tell me Todd lives in Ipswich-on-Mutton?

    There is hope for us Brit consultants yet.

  • Laurent Duperval

    April 13, 2009

    “… can usually tell by their questions and attitude if I want to commit to helping them or not.”

    Oh. Wow.

    L

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