Build Trust with a Client or Lose Business for Stupid Reasons

Last week, I did something I am really not supposed to do. I got angry with a customer. I made statements to them that indicated the decision they were making was a bad one. The customer went so far as to send me an email later "apologizing" to me and said "I did nothing wrong." Quite to the contrary I did many things wrong in this process, so let's begin.

First: If you are not going to do business with someone, be up front with them. Tell them " I went with competitor XYZ because their price was better, they offered faster turn around time, they offered 24 hour customer support." Whatever the reason, articulate that to the vendors you didn't select. It's the only way we can learn. Don't tell a sales person they "did a great job." In your mind you are paying a compliment, trying to make us feel better. We feel insulted. If we did such a great job then why not use us? Now, back to our story.

That wasn't my problem though. I lost this sale because the customer did not trust me. I am sure she liked me and she enjoyed meeting with me but when it came to making a change, she took the word of a total stranger over mine. That is a  BIG failure on my part. What this particular case came down to was a fear on the customers part that I could not overcome because I had not worked hard enough to gain her faith in my knowledge. I told her that she did not have a binding contract with her current provider and someone else told her she did. I have been in this industry for 12 years, the other person was a temp with less than a year of telecom experience. You see where this was a failure on my part.

Where the trouble started was I believed the customer too readily. When she told me about her situation, I believed it with little or no clarification. When she told me that she valued working with local companies I took that at face value, when in fact that meant very little to her. What ultimately was important to her was to keep things status quo. The savings I offered the customer and my expertise could not overcome her fear of change.

So a couple lessons I take from this one: don't take a customer at face value for their statements. It is important to ALWAYS ask for clarification, get an example even. It will help you better position your product or service.  Determine your customers risk/reward factor. If you can better gauge your customer risk tolerance then you can better leverage innovation to solve their problems.

Thanks for reading today

Mike S.


BTW follow me on twitter @mistertelecom