I was out in a country town in Western New South Wales a while back, and it struck me how friendly everyone was.
People say hello on the street. You walk into a cafe and it’s warm, it’s welcoming, properly country hospitality. The kind of thing you don’t get as much in the city.
And it’s easy to look at that and think, well, the service out here must be better.
It might feel better. But feeling better and actually performing better are two different things.
Here’s what the data tells us. People in the country aren’t any better at following a process than anyone else. They might smile more. They might be more welcoming. But that doesn’t mean they’re closing the sale, asking the right questions, or doing the things that actually move a customer through to a purchase.
The warmth is real. The performance isn’t necessarily there.
This is the trap so many business owners fall into, and it’s not just a country versus city thing. It happens everywhere. You walk into a location, the staff are lovely, everyone’s smiling, the energy feels right, and you assume that means things are running well.
But friendliness is just one layer. Underneath that, you’ve still got to ask, are they actually doing the job? Are they following the process that drives the result you need?
I see this play out constantly with mystery shopping. A store can score brilliantly on warmth and likeability and still completely miss the basics. No cross-sell. No attempt to close. No capturing of customer details. The customer walks out feeling great and you’ve still lost the sale.
So don’t be fooled by the nice veneer. A welcoming smile doesn’t tell you whether your process is being followed. It just tells you the person is pleasant to deal with.
If you want to know what’s actually happening in your business, you need to look past how it feels and into what’s actually being done. That’s the only way you’ll know whether your team is genuinely performing, or just genuinely likeable.
Both matter. But they’re not the same thing. And mixing them up is an easy way to miss what’s really going on.