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| Trustworthy Customers and Partners for Small Business
I was thinking earlier about what I would write for my second entry today and there have been a few matters playing on my mind over the last few hours that I could talk about but one in particular I find interesting, sad and funny all at the same time. And there are lessons to be learned from it for any small business. Just recently another small businessman mentioned a thought that he had been thinking about for a future project. If the project were to proceed it would need the services of a fairly skilled programmer, which this person was not. One the face of it the project had a lot of potential and there is a growing need for the product that this person had in mind. It also happened to be something that Toni had been toying with for a few weeks. The original mention of the project was made in public to a fairly diverse audience so I had no problems about approaching this person and offering to work with him to bring the project to fruition. I emailed him and told him we might have the solutions he needed. While I’m certainly no programmer Toni and I do have somebody on the team who could have produced everything that the project required. So I invited him to get back to me and we could have some preliminary discussions just to explore the possibilities of us working together. That was several days ago and since then I’ve heard absolutely nothing. And to tell you the truth I wasn’t surprised because I have the distinct feeling that this person feels very uncomfortable about dealing with us. His reasons for feeling that way may be very valid – to him. But it’s sad that without ever speaking to either of us he has dismissed us. It’s interesting that someone would not even be interested in the vaguest preliminary discussions even though we do have the solution to his problems. And it’s funny because if I didn’t laugh about it I would probably become very disillusioned with people like him and I don’t need that. But that sort of attitude is something that you will sometimes encounter in your small business life no matter how honourable you might be in your dealings with others. I suppose I could harass him and pester him with follow up emails, maybe even phone calls but that’s not going to achieve anything in this situation. Instead we accept him where he is at in his business life and we’re moving on. It would be easy I suppose to carry some grudge but that’s not our way either. He obviously still has a lot to learn about life and one day he might realise that maybe it’s what he thinks of as the black sheep in the flock that actually carries the finest wool. Some of your
customers and the people you deal with may look like absolute deadbeats
but quite often it’s those people that you could trust with your
life. But you will never know unless you talk to them.
1 Sep 2005 |
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