Delicious > Edible, and Exceptional > Mediocre

Adam Savage, the man, the myth-buster, the legend, bonded with Tim Ferriss about cooking eggs (The Tim Ferriss Show, Episode 370). Savage said, “Eggs are tough. Eggs are unforgiving. Eggs, like chicken, have a wide range of being edible but a short range of being delicious.” 

Client service and relationship management are the chicken and eggs of a professional’s world. There’s a wide range of them being “good enough,” but a short range of being exceptional. As they discuss in the interview, there’s a lot of ways and methods to cook an egg like a pro, but a process with a consistently good outcome has to be earned through study and practice. 

Now consider just how much edible mediocrity we all experience (re: tolerate) every day. A professional’s competition isn’t exclusive to their direct competitors. We don’t have to tell people how much better we are, we have to show them how we treat our clients differently from how they’re treated nearly everywhere else. 

Is the cable company’s telephone hold time that hard to beat? Is the disinterested teenager at the fast-casual counter stiff competition? Once we figure out what deliciously exceptional looks like, it’s all about maintaining our process moving forward. The comparisons will provide themselves. 

Set the bar high. 

Delicious > edible

Exceptional > mediocre

The rest will take care of itself.