Timing is everything

On the subject of timing in regards to getting back to real estate leads as many times at it takes to close, I was reminded of a story that I wanted to share.

As a young and restless entrepreneur I had gotten myself into the resteraunt business even though to this day I cannot spell resteraunt without spellcheck.

I had acquired a resteraunt after years in the food and beverage industry. Ok…I was a domino’s pizza guy, but you get the idea.

Back the story.

I was asked to cater a job at the local college, which happens to be the US Naval Academy.

Why they asked me when I had not one catering job under my belt, I will never know, but they were paying, so I was selling.

I got to work the morning of the catering job and started cooking early to prepare lunch for 100 people. My assistant was a great kid and I still know him and like him very much. Anyway we prepared all the food and had all the napkins and plastic utensils that 100 people would need and I had borrowed and rented some large chaffing dishes. We were prepared and it was going to come off well, there was no doubt in my mind. We packed it all up and I drove to the Naval Academy and pulled up to one of the enormous Hall’s that are all over the campus and brought the food in on some dining carriages. I was nervous but beaming with pride. That was 100 people that we going to taste the fine food that we had prepared with care and diligence.

The fellow that had made the order was there to greet me but he looked surprised. I said here we are and here is everything that you had asked for. He gently told me that the graduation lunch was planned for the next day. That is my example of BAD timing.

It was everything he wanted. Delivered to him with care and prepared with attention to detail. It was the simple detail of timing that I had gotten wrong.

Consequently I had to take all the food back the resteraunt and try my best to make specials for dinner from the lunch that had gone to waste.

As a side note, the resteraunt business is a tough one with very low margins of profit and even lower margins of success. I found myself on the lower end of the margins in both cases and it was all because of this little thing called “Timing”

The benefit of this lesson was not lost on me. It is better to have good timing than great service. No one cares about great service if the timing is wrong. No one cares how nice we are if they are not ready to do something. Even if they want to do something, it won’t stick unless the timing is right. In the real estate game there are multiple opportunities to take advantage of timing but we have to be consistent with being there when and if we are needed by following up and staying in touch with the client.

BTW I haven’t spelled resteraunt correctly once in this entire post.