Lose the Attitude or Lose the Client

I want to share something that happens to Sales Reps waaaaay too often.

I have a client with a billing problem and she's been trying to work it out with the Home Office for 2 1/2 weeks. This is not a little billing problem, this is a really big billing problem and it's an important client. Here's my first concern - guess how I found out about this? That's right - the client emailed me. I should not be finding out about these things from my clients. Too much trouble for the HO to shoot me a note or call me to say "We've got a problem on XYZ Co., this what it is and we're working on it and will let you know if you need to do anything"? Now, I don't want to hear about every little problem but please use a little common sense to say "Rich needs a heads-up on this" for the big things. This lack of communication makes us both look like idiots.

But wait - there's more. We had a conference call, me, the client and four (count 'em) Home Office staff. Good thing I was there to referee, because the HO people were very defensive about how they'd done things. Apparently, it was the client's fault for not understanding how we were charging them. Notwithstanding the fact that a lot of the charges made no logical sense or that nowhere did we attempt to explain how we arrived at these odd numbers. Clearly, the client was wrong and they should just take our word for it that the charges were correct. Guess what didn't happen.

OK, let me make this perfectly clear: the client is not lucky that we let them do business with us, we are lucky that they have chosen to do business with us. I have seen this attitude for years, at many different companies, that somehow our clients should be thrilled that we allow them to buy our products. Where does that come from and how does it possibly make sense?

We shouldn't put people in a position that they need to change their procedures to match our internal processes. We should know what the clients need and expect. We should be accommodating to them, not the other way around.

There are very few companies in the world who make or do something so unique that a client can't go elsewhere, and get something just (or almost) as good without the condescending attitude. Everyone does it all the time - Bank of America treats you badly? Well, Washington Mutual is right down the street. Is Cingular constantly overcharging you? Switch to T-Mobile. The point is that if your employees are doing that to your clients, your clients will leave. And my reputation gets tarnished in the meantime and, really, that's all I have.

</rant>

I know I'm not saying anything new here. Everyone knows you're supposed to treat your clients well, right? Well, apparently everyone doesn't know this because this little scenario happened just this week and I'll bet it happened a thousand other times this week to other reps.

Think this doesn't happen in your company? It does. Call any one of your sales reps right now and ask. That's OK, I'll wait. Do do do doooo do. See, what did I tell you? Maybe it doesn't happen a lot, but it shouldn't happen at all. Make it stop!