Under Promise, Over Deliver — How Small Promises Build Big Trust
Same 11:45 delivery, two very different stories — one breaks trust, the other builds it.
When Sales Slow, Don’t Panic — Build a Scoreboard
December was strong.
January was soft.
February has been worse.
And here’s what made it unsettling: it’s worse than 2025 — and 2025 had a built-in excuse. DoGE swept through the DMV and budgets froze. People weren’t spending.
This year?
No obvious villain besides an epic snow and ice storm that shut schools down for a week in January.
Just… eerily quiet days.
That’s the kind of quiet that makes you stare at the ceiling at 3:12 a.m. wondering:
What is happening?
For a few days I did what most business owners do when revenue dips.
I speculated.
I blamed the economy.
I refreshed my POS sales report too often.
But then I realized something uncomfortable:
We didn’t have a revenue problem.
We had a churn problem.
The Churn Wake-Up Call
When we pulled a report, only three customers from February of last year ordered again this February.
Three.
That’s not a dip.
That’s a leak.
And leaks don’t fix themselves.
You can’t “positive mindset” your way out of churn.
You build a framework so you can measure it.
So instead of asking:
“Why are sales slow?”
We started asking:
“How healthy is our customer base?”
That changed everything.
The New Scoreboard
We kept two lagging indicators:
- Closed opportunities this month
- Breakfast sales this month
Those matter. They keep the team in hunter mode and correlate directly with hitting our monthly sales targets.
But we added leading indicators — the ones that determine whether we’re actually improving at building customer relationships.
1. Customer Graduation
Not all customers are the same. Some are trying you. Some are testing you. A few are deciding whether you become part of their routine.
We defined something simple based on transaction history:
- 1 order
- 2–5 orders
- 6th order +
At the 6th order, you’re not experimenting with Apple Spice anymore.
You’re a fan.
So now we track how many customers graduate each month.
One to two.
Five to six.
Not just revenue.
Relationships.
2. Year-Over-Year Repeat Customers
How many customers from February 2025 ordered again in February 2026?
That number is now on the scoreboard.
Because retention is quieter than acquisition — but more powerful.
3. Referrals
Referrals are our flywheel.
They cost less.
They close faster.
They trust more.
So instead of hoping for referrals, we count them.
What gets measured gets energy.
From Panic to Architecture
Here’s what changed emotionally.
When you stare at slow sales without structure, it feels like chaos.
When you build KPIs around behavior — graduation, reactivation, referrals — it feels like a plan. And sometimes, before the revenue shows up, you have to celebrate the process wins that move you forward.
The month may still be slow.
But the energy shifts from:
“What is happening?”
To:
“Here’s what we’re building.”
That’s a completely different posture.
The Hard Truth About Churn
Churn is rarely about food quality.
It’s habit.
It’s assistant turnover.
It’s budget resets.
It’s someone else emailing at the right moment.
If you’re not deliberately nurturing relationships, the market will.
That’s not dramatic.
It’s math.
Positive Energy — But Grounded
I’m not excited because February looks good.
It doesn’t.
I’m excited because we’ve stopped guessing.
We now know:
- How many new customers convert
- How many repeat
- How many refer
- How many graduate into fans
That’s how stability gets built.
Not with one big December.
But with dozens of small second orders.
The Bigger Lesson
This isn’t really about catering.
It’s about what you do when something feels uncertain.
You can spiral.
Or you can build a scoreboard.
And scoreboards do something powerful:
They turn emotion into action.
They turn chaos into process.
They turn fear into forward motion.
February may still miss.
But we’re not wandering anymore.
It’s the lost feeling that’s hardest to live with.
We’re operating.
And that feels like progress in a season of uncertainty.
Know what’s enough. Build what matters.
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