The Contractor in a 7

I recently overhead a conversation between a sales rep who was considering getting into a BMW 3 Series and another guy who was having some work done on his house. The homeowner mentioned that the contractor he had hired was driving a BMW 7 Series (a $100,000 car) and that worried him a bit. He wondered if he was being ripped off due to the caliber of the car his contractor was driving. The sales rep had the same reservations. Could he show up to sales calls even in a $40,000 car. What would his clients think? Would they wonder if they had hired the right guy?

Of course, I felt inclined to butt in and offer the flipside of the argument. If the sales rep was driving a nice car, his clients would assume he was successful--that he is good at what he does. I find it interesting that the homeowner in the above paragraph never mentioned the quality of the work done by the contractor. The mere notion that he drove such a fancy car made the homeowner feel as if he was being taken for a ride (pun intended). Why should it matter how much the contractor was making as long as he held up his end of the bargain?

I don't know why we think in this way, but we are concerned about how much the other person is making off of us. We don't simply care about the price. We care about the profit packed into it. If we know there is a high profit margin in what we are buying, we are turned off by it. Why is this so? Is it really even our business how much the salesperson or his company stands to profit? Why should we even care? What is, or should be, important to us is the quality of the work that is done.

It goes beyond this. I believe that we should want the person we are doing business with do make as much money as possible. We get what we pay for. Allowing the company we are doing business with to make large profits enables it to continue providing superior quality service. At least in theory, the contractor driving his dream car is going to be much more motivated to excel than the contractor driving something he could barely afford from the corner used car lot. Businesses are made of people and people are people. If we reward them for a job well done, they will continue to do their job well. If we punish them for a job well done, they will not feel very inspired to succeed again.

What kind of car do the people you do business with drive? What kind of house do they live in? Are they successful? If they aren't, you shouldn't be happy that they aren't 'ripping you off.' You should ask yourself why you aren't helping them to become successful. It's not only better for them to make higher profits. In the long run, it's better for you that they succeed.