Accept business only at a price permitting thoroughness. Then do a thorough job, regardless of cost to us.
Arthur C. NielsenRead
Be influenced by nothing but your clients' interests. Tell them the truth.
Interpretation
Focus on serving your clients' needs and be honest with them.
This quote emphasizes the importance of prioritizing clients' interests above all else and maintaining transparency and honesty in those interactions. Arthur C. Nielsen advocates for a client-centered approach in business, suggesting that success and trust are built by putting the needs of customers first and communicating with integrity.
In practice
In a business seminar, you could use this quote to emphasize ethical practices.
Accept business only at a price permitting thoroughness. Then do a thorough job, regardless of cost to us.
There are two kinds of businesses: The first earns 12%, and you can take it out at the end of the year. The second earns 12%, but all the excess cash must be reinvested - there's never any cash. It reminds me of the guy who looks at all of his equipment and says, 'There's all of my profit.' We hate that kind of business.
If you believe your product or service can fulfill a true need, it's your moral obligation to sell it.
If you develop a product that gets what the customer is trying to get done, you don't have to advertise; people will just pull it into their lives.
Access to talented and creative people is to modern business what access to coal and iron ore was to steel-making.
I am still looking for the modern equivalent of those Quakers who ran successful businesses and made money because they offered honest products and treated their people decently . . . This business creed, sadly, seems long forgotten.
Investors are always biased to invest in things they themselves understand. So venture capitalists like Uber because they like driving in black town cars. They don't like Airbnb because they like staying in five-star hotels, not sleeping on people's couches.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.