[A meme that has been repeatedly reprinted with no known source as “The Ten Lessons of the Omi Merchants.
- 1: Business is a service to the world and to others, and profit is its natural reward.
- 2: The quality of the place is more important than the size of the store, and the quality of the goods is more important than the size of the place.
- 3: Service after the sale, rather than flattery before the sale, is what makes a customer eternal.
- 4: Don’t worry about having too little money, worry about not having enough credit
- 5: Don’t force the sale, don’t sell what the customer likes either, sell what works for the customer.
- 6: It is good to sell good things, and it is even better to advertise good goods and sell more of them
- 7: Giveaways, even on a piece of paper, make customers happy; when you have nothing to give, give away a smile.
- 8: Keep the right price. Discounts are so bad that they make you feel bad.
- 9: Always consider today’s profit and loss, and make it a habit not to go to bed without revealing today’s profit and loss.
- 10: There is no boom or bust in business, you have to make money either way.
All of these 10 aphorisms were from Konosuke Matsushita. The book is called “Thirty Articles on Business Tactics”. The “Thirty Articles of Business Tactics” appeared in the first and second issues of “Matsushita Denki Renmei Ten Keiei Shiryo Shiryo” (Matsushita Electric Industrial Federation Store Management Data), an information magazine for Matsushita Electric (now Panasonic) cooperating stores, which was first published in 1936. To be precise, it does not appear to be a compilation of Konosuke himself, but rather a compilation by his employees of the essentials of his business philosophy, which he has shared with them from time to time since the founding of the company.
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