This may seem like a pointless exercise to some, but I got to considering this since I am reforming my business. In the past, I simply bought from whoever and wherever I could and sold to several scrap yards. My aim now is to concentrate on businesses which produce fairly large amounts of waste metal. In doing this, my goal is that the businesses will perceive what I’m doing as a service which removes unwanted clutter. In the process, I started thinking about such things as if I were buying and selling goods or providing a service. Then I started wondering if the businesses I was targeting were rightly called customers or something else. Since I have no formal training in business, I did some research and found that there are two broad categories called “goods” and “services” - but was I actually buying and selling goods or providing a service? "Goods" is defined as something tangible - something you can see and/or hold. "Services" are things provided for you by other people. Further research indicated that there is a difference between “customer” and “client”. Customer is defined as someone who purchases a good. Client is defined as someone who purchases a service. Now I have come to the conclusion that although I was involved in purchasing a good, I would now be providing a service since the focus of my business changed. The business from where I get the stuff would be rightly called a client. Although no money is being exchanged, technically they are purchasing my service (keeping their work area clutter-free) through the value of the metal that I get. Does this mean, then, that the scrap yard is the “customer”? Am I a customer of the business?
What do you think? Too much time on my hands? How many actually have developed a written business plan that you follow?
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