Business | Knowledge
‘OH, I NEVER KNEW YOU DID THAT’
‘OH, I NEVER KNEW YOU DID THAT’ IS A PHRASE THAT BUSINESSES HEAR QUITE OFTEN, AND IS OFTEN AN
INDICATION THAT SOME KEY SERVICES AREN’T AS SHOUTED ABOUT AS OTHERS. STUART MASON, FOUNDER OF HERE’S HOW TO, TALKS ABOUT HOW BUSINESSES SHOULD REEVALUATE WHAT THEY OFFER AND SHOUT ABOUT IT ALL.
12 | August/September 2026
If I had a pound for every time I have heard a print business owner say, “a customer told me they never knew we did that”, I would have retired years ago, and so would you.
It is one of those comments that every company in the graphics industry has heard at some point, yet very few stop to think about what it actually means because the natural reaction is to assume the customer simply was not paying attention. After all, the product is on the website, it has been mentioned on social media, it appears in the company brochure, and it has probably featured in countless conversations over the years, so surely the customer should have known. The uncomfortable truth is they don’t, and that’s on
you, not them.
THE CUSTOMERS’ INTERESTS Customers do not look at your business the way you do because they are not interested in your business. They are interested in solving today’s problem, and once that problem has been solved, they go back to running their own business without giving another thought to the hundreds of products and services you are capable of supplying. If they buy business cards every month, then
you become the business card company. If they order brochures every quarter, then you become the brochure company. If they regularly purchase site boards or safety signage, then you become the sign company. Everything else quietly disappears into the background because it has no relevance to what they need today.
That does not mean they have forgotten your website or ignored your marketing.
It simply means your other products are sitting in exactly the same place as that bus at the end of the road. They are visible, but they are not important. Until they are…
The problem is that when the need finally appears, the customer often has no immediate association between that new requirement and your business. The restaurant owner who has bought menus from you for the last five years suddenly decides to refurbish the premises and orders the external signage from someone else because they never connected your company with signs. The construction business that has trusted you with site boards spends thousands on branded workwear without ever asking for a quotation because they genuinely did not realise you supplied clothing.
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