Sponge cake has no cream or jam, yet it sells.

Sponge cake that’s stale gets thrown out.

What about a stale cake with cream and jam?

It was my boys' birthday this month, and we bought them a cake.

The jam was very jammy and the cream was very creamy, but the sponge…

well, that wasn’t spongey at all. In fact, it was stale.

But the cake wasn’t thrown out.

The cream and jam made it palatable and made things ‘not that bad’.

When you’re building your service offerings, it’s easy to get carried away with the cream, jam, and icing but then you deliver a stale sponge cake.

Just because your customers can’t throw you away doesn’t mean they’re satisfied - the core fundamentals of the cake were not great.

Having cream and jam isn’t enough for your cake to be great, especially when the basics have not been delivered correctly.

A stale sponge cake, no matter how much cream and jam you add, remains a stale cake.

When building your services, don’t rely on ‘the extras’ to mask fundamental flaws.

Customers may tolerate it, but they won’t be truly happy.