Your neighbourhood technician
How word of mouth from a hardware shop is worth more than any advertising campaign.
There is a kind of trust you can't buy with marketing.
It is the kind that is built over time, street by street, client by client. It is what makes the owner of the hardware shop round the corner, when an elderly customer asks him "but how does this computer work?", answer without hesitation: "Call Giacomo."
No Google campaign. No sponsored ad. Just a person who did their job well — and someone else who remembers it.
THE NEIGHBOURHOOD AS AN ECOSYSTEM
I have clients who found me through their trusted hardware shop. Through the appliance shop round the corner. Through the local shopkeeper who sells everything except computers — but knows who to send people to when the computer doesn't work.
They are almost always private individuals. Often elderly. People who don't search on Google, don't read reviews on Trustpilot, don't compare quotes online. They trust the people they know. And they trust whoever is recommended by the people they know.
WHAT WORKING WITH THEM MEANS
It means slowing down. Explaining things calmly, without taking anything for granted. It means that "the mouse doesn't work" can mean twenty different things — and that working out which one takes listening, not hurry.
It also means being reliable in a different way. Not reliable like a contractual SLA. Reliable like a person. The one who answers the phone, who turns up when he says he will, who doesn't disappear after the first visit.
WORD OF MOUTH DOESN'T LIE
I have clients who found me this way three, four years ago. They are still there. And over time, some of them have started passing my name on to others — exactly as the hardware shop had done with them.
The circle closes. And it widens.
I don't have a superpower. I have just learned that in a neighbourhood, as in a computer network, everything is connected. And that the most important connection isn't the cabled one — it's the one between people.
Let's talk about it over a..
