I used to use the phone book as a gauge of how well our business was going to do in a year. I would excitedly open the phone book to the carpet cleaning section any time one showed up at our door to see who had the biggest ad and who had the best prices and deals. It was in our little carpet cleaning oligopoly where whoever had the best placement and deal in the phone book would get most of the business, it was a winner take most type of deal. Well I dropped out of the phone book as I discussed in a post from a while ago, and now I use the phone book to see who is still clinging on. it went from several full page carpet cleaning ads with several pages following to just a few pages and no full page ads, many companies, including myself not listed at all. Now the metric that seems to have replaced looking into the phone book is to look on Google to see who has top rank. How do you use your phone book? It shows up at your door every year, do you use it to find companies anymore? or have you found alternative uses for it.
