Monday, May 21, 2007

Breaking up is hard to do

Have you ever “broken up” with a customer? Early in my career, I would have thought that was a stupid thing to do. I mean, you need all the customers you can get – right? Wrong! You need the right customers - customers that you can help, and help profitably.

We had a customer recently that, for a bunch of reasons, we were not able to help. We tried, and tried, and apparently were more responsive than any of their other vendors, because when we finally told them that we didn’t think we could help them, they did not want to accept that. It took about five or six emails and phone calls to “end” it. I still think it was a good move. We both could have kept trying to make it work, but we had other opportunities to focus on, and in the long run, they were not going to be happy with the results (or lack of results). I am actually quite proud of our team for recognizing the situation and making the hard decision.

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