tapesolutionsinc.com Blog

Is there ever a legitimate reason to tell a customer you cannot help them?  The answer is YES!  As a business owner and career-long salesperson, I never like to be put in a position to decline business, but there are at least three very good reasons to let a customer go elsewhere.

1.  Bad credit risk.  Unless you are in the business of finance, extending terms that are beyond your comfort zone are generally not a good idea.  Allowing customers to pay you a month or more late has to be hurting your cash flow and setting your company at a higher risk of increasing your bad debt expenses each year.  If you allow terms on your invoices, don’t be afraid to be active in collections when a customer is late paying you.  Listen to what the reasons are that accounts payable tell you as to why they are paying beyond terms.  If you hear statements like, “We are really scrapped for cash right now, so we are paying all vendors at 90 days instead of 30.”, it may be time to cut that customer’s credit limit down to zero.  It may mean they will stop buying from you, but would you rather risk never getting paid?  Are you so desperate for their business that you will allow them to set their own terms?

2.  Difficult customer.  This is a reason that really involves much thought before I would take action on it, but sometimes it is the smarter thing to do.  If a customer is extremely difficult to please and you have exhausted every possible solution, telling them you cannot help them may be the best thing to do for a couple of reasons.  They could be putting out bad feedback about your company that may not be true which could harm your reputation.  With so much activity in social media these days, it doesn’t take much effort for someone to spread a bad word and it get around.  Another reason would be because your return on investment is zero or less because of the expense of the effort made to please the customer.  At some point, you just have to cut your losses and run.

3.  Set them free to test the waters elsewhere.   I know some of you are looking at me crosseyed on this one, but hear me out.  Even if you have done everything you can to bring value and loyalty to a customer, sometimes they lose sight of what you mean to them as a vendor and see greener pastures when a competitor comes in the door with a cheaper price.  Many times over the years I have refused to meet a competitor’s price because I knew “it was too good to be true”, but the customer couldn’t see that.  I backed out, leaving the door open, and waited for the shoe to drop.  More than not came back and ordered from me again within a relatively short time without me having to lower my price.

Let me hear from you.  What has been your experience?  Are there any other reasons why you would not do business with someone?

Kim Lawrence (aka The Tapelady)

www.tapesolutionsinc.com

Throughout life we have situations and obstacles thrown in our path that we have to overcome before we reach our goals successfully.  One has to learn how to treat, react, and resolve each obstacle or they will never accomplish anything in life.  I know very few people who have had success handed to them on a silver platter, so almost all of us have to work towards our goals and dreams – or they stay just that – a dream.

I grew up in a small town and experienced much of the great and the bad of living in such an environment.  The bad experiences, mostly social ones, created great unhappiness and I never really learned the best ways of dealing with being bullied and picked upon.  Most advice I was given by adults was to just “ignore it”.  My solution was to be as perfect as I could be so that people could struggle to find things with which to tease me.  That obviously is not something I would recommend to any young person, but it is how I handled it at the time.  I knew I would grow up soon and be able to leave and start “my real life” somewhere else, so I used that as my inspiration and set my goals accordingly.

I knew I needed a college education and worked to have to best grades in order to be accepted in a major university.  I was accepted to study marketing at Texas A&M University.  At orientation, the incoming freshman class was told that almost 50% of us would not make it to graduation.  I was told that the scores on my entrance exam indicated that I would have issues and the chances of me making it were slim.  I decided I wasn’t going to let someone else tell me my destiny.  What I accomplished was in my control and I would not let myself fail.  I did struggle in a few classes my first two years.  It seemed that they were always the subjects that had classrooms of 200+ students and I didn’t learn well in such a large environment.  I also had never really learned proper study skills in high school and had to figure out on my own how I could successfully learn and grasp the material in order to score well on tests.  I did figure it out.  I never failed, dropped, or quit a class.  My grade point average may not have been over a 3.0, but I did get my degree in four years.

When I graduated, the job search was difficult.  Unemployment was over 8% and many large corporations were on hiring freezes.  I was told by a couple of recruiters that I was applying for jobs that were not for females.  I was told that I was competing against people who had experience.  Once again, I was not going to let someone else tell me that my goals were not attainable.  I made it a job to find a sales position where I could excel and get experience and after two months, I did receive an offer.

As a salesperson, you are told “No” all the time.  I knew persistance and learning better skills in answering people’s objections would eventually turn some of those No’s into Yeses.  After several years in sales, I asked for an opportunity to be promoted into sales management.  My bosses would have objections to moving me out of the sales field, so they would put me through all kinds of testing in hopes that they would find some reason to say I wasn’t suited for management.  When that didn’t work, they decided to give me a small amount of management responsibility, but I had to do those job functions, in addition to, handling my accounts and meeting my sales goals.  They thought I couldn’t handle the additional work load, but I did and my sales didn’t suffer.

After too many years of this double duty, I finally decided to leave.  I put much effort into planning and developing my own business.  When it came time to reveal to my employer that I was leaving, I was already prepared for the obstacles that they would throw my way.  Being prepared doesn’t remove the stress of going through it, but it certainly helps making sure you do get through it.  Even before my last day of employment, my bosses were trying to get me to agree to sign documents that would have limited my business plans.  When I refused to sign them, they unleased their full power on me through their attorney.  Because I was prepared for this, I had hired my own attorney and he was ready and waiting to stifle their efforts to prohibit me from moving forward.  Within a couple of months, my former employer gave up their effort and I was ready to open.

Everyone who has ever started a new business has probably been told by financiers/bankers and other “experts” that over 50% of new businesses fail within the first two years.  Sound familiar?  (Refer to the orientation meeting at college.)  I was confident that I would make it, because I was prepared and knew I had the skills to make my business grow and become profitable.  I didn’t have expectations that were unreasonable and unachieveable.  I didn’t expect that I would be successful without working hard.  I didn’t expect it would happen overnight.  What I did know was that I was not going to let other people set my limits for me or convince me that I would fail.

Kim Lawrence (aka The Tapelady)

Small or large businesses have much to be concerned about in today’s economy to be sure.  Whether your business is weathering the storm okay or struggling to find new business to fill in where your existing customers have disappeared, you still need to give the best customer service to the people who are wanting to buy from you.

Last Tuesday our phone line for the fax machine went out.  I must have dialed the service phone number to AT&T three times before I figured out what buttons I was supposed to push to check and report the problem.  I was never given an option to speak to a live person.  A couple of hours after I successfully submitted my problem, I received a phone call from a real person to verify my problem and request for a service call.  I was informed that they were very busy and it would be the following Monday before they could schedule a service call.  I could not believe my ears!  AT&T (whose service office is literally 35 yards from my building) could not do anything about repairing my phone line for my business for almost a week.  I had hoped that they were exaggerating, but it did take that long to get the line repaired.   This is a perfect example of what not to do!

I also have a vendor whom we do business with frequently that is another example (in my opinion) of what not to do.  This particular vendor has a minimum order that we have to meet to receive our product with prepaid freight.  I placed an order with them that exceeded their minimum and then a day or two later, I receive orders from customers that come from this same vendor.  The order was still scheduled for production, so I asked if I could add some items to my purchase order.  I then received a long speech (oh, excuse me, I meant explanation) as to how much of a hardship this was on them to do and it is against company policy for that very reason, so could I please refrain from adding to my orders in the future……  You get my drift.

It is amazing to me that companies with this type of attitude aren’t losing customers right and left!  We generally have multiple choices available to us when we wish to buy something, so why would we choose to buy from a company who makes it difficult or who doesn’t respond the way we need them to respond?  I have been known to go elsewhere when my business wasn’t appreciated and I am sure you have to.  Below are a few of my suggestions that every company should address with their customer service:

1)  Have options available for emergency situations.

2)  Adjust your procedures/policies when they aren’t meeting the needs of your customers and it could be costing you business.  Analyze those areas that make it difficult to modify a customer’s order.  How can it be improved?

3)  Have a real person answer your telephone.  I am not a robot and I don’t like talking to one!

4)  Get to know your customers and treat them like a human being instead of just an order.

5)  Follow through with commitments and requests and be responsive to your customer’s needs.

6)  Be knowledgeable about your product so that you can be of genuine help to your customers.  It is generally not a good thing when they know more about your product than you do!

Kim Lawrence (aka The Tapelady)

A few months ago a new customer had indicated to me that he used to work for one of my competitors as an outside sales representative, but left there and eventually started his own business in an unrelated field.  I seized the opportunity to learn more about his experience working for my competitor and the reasons why he was unhappy there.  He told me that he became frustrated because he thought my competitor’s company was just “too old-fashioned” in the way they did things and he didn’t like having to spend so much of his time constantly hunting for new customers.  His viewpoint was that his employer should have been finding the leads for him so that all he had to do was call on the account and “close the deal”.  I inquired as to how he thought the company was to go about finding all the new leads for him.  He explained that this company did not have a website at all and if they had, it would have been bringing in tons of leads for the sales staff.

I do agree that, in the marketplace today, it is surprising that any company would not see the need or value in having a website on the internet.  It  doesn’t have to be an elaborate, multi-page site with a shopping cart.  An informative webpage that displays your logo, contact information, and an explanation of what kind of business you have can be helpful to many potential customers.  Having a website doesn’t have to be expensive.  You will have the initial cost of reserving a domain name and finding a host, but that can be done for $100/year or less.  There are many options of software out there that one can use to design a basic website from a template, including Microsoft Publisher (TM) or even one that your host provider makes available for free.

Just having a website up does not automatically mean that hundreds or thousands of people will be beating down your door though.  People have to find your website in the first place.  It can take years of web traffic viewing your website before it will ever show up in a natural search on most search engines like Yahoo! and Google.  Some amount of education and money will have to be invested in search engine optimization and advertising to drive people into your website.  The new social media websites are now the craze in helping companies build a brand and drive more interested traffic to their websites, as well.

I do agree with that former competitor sales rep that this effort by his former employer could have helped them find leads for their sales staff, but that avenue alone would not be enough.  Face to face sales is always going to be necessary if you wish that new customer to be a repetitive one.  Long-lasting relationships result  from a vendor getting to know their customers personally and taking the time to understand their business and needs.  A customer who found you online and places an order will easily forget you.  All they have to do is search again for what they need and see hundreds of other companies just like you on the web!  You have to follow up and stay in touch with these people, so they don’t forget you.

I also believe that a proactive step in finding your customers is still needed, too.  Any successful salesperson will tell you that some amount of cold-calling and time spent prospecting for new customers is part of the job.  They will also tell you that your best leads will come from your existing customers.  Ask for referrals.  The odds of converting a referred customer are far higher.

Putting your business out there the old-fashioned way is still important and necessary, but I do see the value and necessity for the newer ways, too.  Doing both is likely to lead to higher success.  Happy selling!

Kim Lawrence (aka The Tapelady)