It’s True; You Get What You Pay For
By: Kim F. Letus
Do you, as business people, ever feel like you have to give away the store in order to attract new clients?
There are times when I find myself feeling that way. The pressure on process serving agencies to offer competitive pricing is enormous. It can be a major juggling act to keep pricing competitive without compromising quality. The problem is that some prospective clients are of the belief that ‘competitive’ pricing in our industry should be synonymous with ‘cheap’.
And as you all know folks, if you can provide quality process service cheap with gas being over $3.00 per gallon, new licensing requirements being implemented and the Attorney General on high alert for abuse and fraud, you’re accomplishing quite a feat. It’s an ongoing battle, and the sad truth of the matter is that many clients will still give a lot more weight to a cheap price than to exceptional service at a fair price.
I don’t understand it, especially with the climate that surrounds our industry today and the potential consequences to attorneys and process servers for lackluster practices.
The overhead for a business grows with the business.
Changes are required that cost money. There are more expenses that must be met. This can sometimes make it more difficult for mid-size businesses, which a good deal of process serving agencies are, to compete for jobs where the main objective of the prospect is a low price.
More than twenty years after my business was commenced, I find myself being a bit nostalgic for the simpler days, when the business was very small. In those days, it was about the doing the job well, not about managing employees and process servers, dealing with accountants and computer techs, analyzing expenses, etc. Not that I’m not happy my business has grown, but it sometimes seems that the more experienced and proficient the business becomes, the more it is required to compromise to attract new clients. The expected price is not always commensurate with the experience and quality afforded the client.
I hope that the day comes when diligent and quality-conscious process serving agencies get the respect and credit that they deserve, and that it will be recognized at some point that “you get what you pay for“.