"We have always done it this way" is usually said just after something has gone wrong. A long-standing customer moves to a newer firm, and when you ask why, they say the other lot sent the quote the same afternoon, or let them book online, or took a card on the spot. You explain how you work and why. They are polite about it. They do not come back.
"We have always done it this way" is not a reason. It is a sign that nobody has chosen that way recently. Most of your habits are probably fine. The job is to find the one or two that customers now compare unfavourably, put a cost on them, and test a change you can undo, while keeping what people actually value about you.
This guide is for owners of established businesses who are starting to lose work, staff or margin to newer competitors and suspect the way they work is part of it. It covers why sensible people keep old habits long after they stop paying, what that costs, how to find the habit that matters with what you already have, and how to change it without throwing out what works.
Is this you?
- You have lost a customer or a job to a business that is younger and smaller than yours, and you were not sure why.
- Someone on your team has suggested a different way of doing something, and the answer was that the current way works fine.
- You could not say when you last decided how quotes, invoices or bookings are handled. It was set up years ago and has run ever since.
- Customers ask for things you do not offer, such as paying online, a faster quote or a text instead of a call, and you treat each request as a one-off.
- You are working harder than you used to for roughly the same results.
- When a change is suggested, the first thing you think of is what it would cost to switch, not what it costs to stay.
One distinction before going further. A tradition is something you do on purpose because customers value it: the owner answering the phone, a handwritten note with every delivery, a price that includes the clean-up. A habit is something you do because it is what happened last time. From the inside they look the same. The point of this guide is to tell them apart, not to modernise everything. Plenty of new competitors would love to have your reputation and your customer list.
Why it happens
The old way worked, so you got better at it
In their 1988 review of how organisations learn, Barbara Levitt and James March described what they called competency traps. When a way of working produces good results, people use it more, get better at it, and so get even better results from it. A newer and possibly better way gets so little practice that it never looks as good by comparison. For a business, this means the method you are best at is the one you are least likely to question, and the reason is your success with it, not stubbornness.
Staying put feels like not deciding
Economists William Samuelson and Richard Zeckhauser ran a series of decision experiments in 1988 and found that people stick with the status quo disproportionately often, even when another option would serve them better. Keeping the current way never feels like a choice, so it is rarely examined like one. Changing is a decision you can get wrong. Not changing feels safe, even when it is the riskier of the two.
What you might lose looks bigger than what you might gain
Daniel Kahneman, Jack Knetsch and Richard Thaler summarised the evidence in 1991 that losses loom larger than gains, and linked it directly to status quo bias. The disruption of a change, the training, the customer who might complain, all feel vivid and certain. The jobs you would win are vague and in the future. So the comparison in your head is tilted before you start.
You have already paid for the current way
The equipment, the paper forms, the years spent building a system around a spreadsheet. Hal Arkes and Catherine Blumer showed in 1985 that people have a greater tendency to continue with something once they have invested money, time or effort in it. That money is spent whatever you do next. The only question that matters is which way works better from here.
Habits run on cues, not on decisions
Psychologists Wendy Wood and Dennis Rünger reviewed the research on habit in 2016. Habits form by repeating something in the same setting, and after a while the setting triggers the behaviour without much thought, even when the goal behind it has changed. Monday morning means writing up invoices by hand because Monday morning always has. That makes habits efficient, and it also means you will not notice when one has stopped paying, because you are not really thinking about it.
Defaults stay default
Whatever was set up at the start tends to stay. Eric Johnson and Daniel Goldstein found in 2003 that whether a country's organ donation form asked people to opt in or opt out made a large difference to how many people ended up consenting to donate. Small businesses show the same pattern in their own paperwork, and Billbooks invoice data shows how strong it is. Nearly 8 in 10 active businesses (87 of 112, 78%) never change the default payment terms, so most invoices go out due on receipt. (Source: Billbooks invoice payment study.) Those terms may suit some of them perfectly. The point is that most never decided.
What it costs if nothing changes
Customers leave without telling you why. Most people do not argue about your process. They compare you with the last business they dealt with, and if that one was easier, they go there next time. You see a quieter year, not a complaint.
The comparison happens without you. Your customers are not comparing you with your competitors of ten years ago. They are comparing you with every business they deal with this month, including the ones that send a quote by text and take payment by link.
Good people stop suggesting things. A team member who has been told twice that the current way works fine will not suggest a third idea. Some of them will take their ideas to an employer who listens.
You pay for it in hours. An old process is often slower, and the time comes out of your evenings, not out of a budget line, which is why nobody adds it up.
The change you avoid gets bigger. A small adjustment made early is cheap. The same change made after you have lost a third of your customers has to be made in a hurry, with less money and less goodwill, and often all at once.
What to do now: seven steps with what you already have
You need a notebook, your last few months of quotes and invoices, and an honest hour. You are not trying to reinvent the business. You are trying to find one habit worth changing.
1. List every point where a customer touches your business
How they find you, how they ask for a price, how long the quote takes, how they book, how they are kept informed, how they are invoiced, how they pay, how you follow up. Next to each, write how it is done today and roughly when that was decided. If the answer to the second is "I do not know" or "when we started", put a mark next to it.
2. Ask the starting-today question
For each marked item, ask: if I were setting up this business from scratch this year, would I choose to do it this way? Not "is it broken?" but "would I pick it?" If the honest answer is yes, it is a tradition and you can stop worrying about it. If it is no, or you hesitate, it goes on a short list.
3. Find out what customers are comparing you with
Ring two or three customers you have lost in the last year and ask, without arguing, what the other business did that made the difference. Ask two recent new customers what nearly put them off. If you can, request a quote from a newer competitor as a customer would and note how long it takes and how it arrives. You are looking for the same item to come up more than once.
4. Put a number on the habit
A habit that only feels old-fashioned is easy to defend. A habit that costs eight hours a month or lost three jobs last quarter is not. Estimate the time it takes, the jobs it has cost you, or the money it delays. Rough numbers are fine. The aim is to compare the cost of staying with the cost of switching, rather than only counting the second.
See what invoicing the old way costs you each year
If invoices are still made in Word or Excel, enter how many you send and how long each takes. The Manual Invoicing Cost Calculator turns that habit into hours and money per year, so you can weigh it against the effort of changing.
5. Separate what customers value from what you are attached to
Take the item at the top of your list and split it in two. What part of it do customers actually value? What part is just how it has always been done? A customer may love that the owner visits to measure up and still not want to wait a week for the written quote. Keep the visit. Change the wait.
6. Change one thing, as a trial with an end date
Pick one item, not five. Run the new way for a fixed period, such as a month or the next twenty jobs, and keep the old way available as a fallback. Decide beforehand what you will measure: quote turnaround, jobs won, days to get paid, hours spent. On the end date, look at the numbers and decide. A trial you can reverse is much easier to start than a permanent change, and it is easier to explain to your team.
7. Ask the newest person in the business
The person who joined most recently has not yet learned to stop seeing the odd things. Ask them what surprised them when they started, and what they would change if it were their business. Then do not defend anything for five minutes. Write it down.
An illustrative example, not a real case: a family plumbing firm that has run for 25 years writes every quote by hand after the site visit and posts or emails it a few days later. The owner has lost several jobs this year to a two-person firm that started recently. Asked why, two customers say the newer firm sent a price before they had left the driveway. Using these steps, the owner keeps what customers like, the experienced plumber visiting in person, and trials one change: a quote sent the same day from a phone, using a standard price list for common jobs. After a month, the firm has a figure for how many quotes became jobs under the new way, and the decision to keep it is based on that, not on how it feels.
If you have already lost ground
Do not try to change everything at once. After a bad year it is tempting to overhaul the whole business in one go. That usually unsettles staff and loyal customers at the same time, and it makes it impossible to tell which change helped. Pick the item that came up most often in step 3 and start there.
Go back to the customers you lost. Some of them left over one specific thing. A short, honest message, "You told us our quotes were slow. We now send them the same day, and we would be glad to quote for your next job", is a reason to try you again. Many will not come back. Some will.
Fix the thing customers can see first. Behind-the-scenes changes matter, but a faster quote, an easier way to pay or a reply the same day is what customers notice and talk about.
Be straight with your team. Tell them what you have learned and what you are going to try, and ask for their help. If someone suggested this change years ago, say so. It costs nothing and it gets you the next good idea.
If the problem is bigger than one habit, look at the bigger picture. If the same kind of setback keeps happening, failing at the same thing again covers how to find the pattern. If changing anything at all feels too risky, sizing a bet you can afford to lose is the place to start.
How to stop it recurring
Review your routines once a year, on purpose. Put it in the calendar like a tax deadline. Go through the list from step 1 and ask the starting-today question again. Things that were right three years ago may not be right now.
Run one small experiment a quarter. A new way of quoting, a different follow-up, a payment option you have not offered. Small, reversible and measured. Over a few years that keeps the business moving without ever needing a painful overhaul.
Write down why you do things. For each important routine, a line on why it exists. When the reason no longer applies, the routine is easy to spot. When it does still apply, you have your answer the next time someone asks.
Check your defaults. Payment terms, standard prices, quote wording, opening hours: whatever was set up on day one and never revisited. Most of them are decisions nobody remembers making. If invoicing is one of the habits on your list, Billbooks lets you set your default payment terms and automatic reminders once, so the decision you make today is applied to every invoice rather than depending on someone remembering it. Whatever you use, the useful step is looking at the setting at all.
Keep listening to new people. New staff, new customers and the occasional honest supplier see your business the way the market does. Make a habit of asking them, and of not defending anything until they have finished.
Two free checks on habits that quietly cost established businesses
Frequently asked questions
What does we have always done it this way mean in a business?
It usually means a process has not been chosen recently. It was set up years ago and has run ever since without anyone asking whether it still suits customers. Some of those processes are traditions customers value. Others are habits that now cost the business work, time or staff.
How do I know which old habits are costing my business?
List every point where customers deal with you, and for each ask whether you would choose it if you started the business this year. Then ask lost and new customers what made the difference for them. The habit that comes up more than once, and that you can put a cost on, is the one to change first.
Why do established businesses lose customers to newer competitors?
Often because customers compare every business with the easiest one they dealt with recently, not with your competitors of ten years ago. A newer firm may quote faster, take payment more easily or reply sooner. Customers rarely complain about it. They simply choose the easier option next time.
How do I change the way things are done without upsetting staff or loyal customers?
Change one thing at a time, as a trial with an end date, and keep the old way as a fallback. Keep the parts customers value and change only the part that slows them down. Tell your team what you are trying and why, and decide whether to keep it based on measured results.
Is it always bad to keep doing things the traditional way?
No. A tradition customers value, such as the owner visiting in person or a personal note with each job, can be one of your strongest advantages. The aim is to tell traditions apart from habits nobody chose, keep the first and test changes to the second.
Why is it so hard to change how a business has always worked?
Research points to several reasons. A method you are good at keeps producing good results, staying put does not feel like a decision, possible losses feel larger than possible gains, and money already spent on the current way makes it harder to drop. None of this means you cannot change. It means the comparison in your head starts out tilted.
The one thing to do today
Write down every point where a customer deals with your business, from first enquiry to final payment. Mark the ones you cannot remember choosing. Then ring one customer you lost this year and ask, kindly and without arguing, what the other business did better.
This is one of the problems in our mindset and habits collection, alongside what to do when the problem is new to you.
