An Interview with Bob Ansett

Sometimes the best lessons come from times less recent. It is easy to get caught up in all the great new trends for business development and often that comes at the expense of forgetting the basics.
Business Guru (my label) Keith Cunningham (no relation to me …he’ll tell you) is known for asking the question “How big would your business be today if you still have every customer who ever tried you?” … WOW. Think about that for a second.
Now in this interview, Bob Ansett (founder of Budget Car Rental Australia) shares his lessons and methods in creating the massively successful car rental franchise in very short time. Bob did some crazy stuff. Example: on one occasion they had run out of cars and a customer called asking for a rental. Rather than tell the customer they had run out (which by Bob’s standards would not be very good customer service) they rented one from Avis and re-rented it to their customer. You would think they would keep quiet about that but no. Bob’s explanation to the customer was “Sir, I apologise if this car is not as clean as you’d like but it is actually one of our competitors cars. We have been so busy we ran out but we didn’t want to let you down so we’ve rented one from Avis. You can be sure next time we’ll have inventory and the condition of the car will be exactly as you’d expect from Budget”
But I won’t spoil it for you. Enjoy the interview. I will warn you, while Bob’s advice is gold, you will see what is lacking in this interview is my interviewing skills. OK I’m new to it. I’m working on it I promise. You’ll get over it.
Audio Interview – Bob Ansett speaking about building Budget Car Rental Australia