Here at Propeller, my office sits between Stew who’s my director of sales and account services, and Eric who leads the development team. Sliding windows (think drive thru) separate us and they’re usually open. Yesterday, Stew got a call from a client and suddenly exclaimed: “that sound was the phone hitting the ground,” and continued “never in the history of this company have I ever heard that from the client”.
Oh crap.
Yet Stew’s expression was ecstatic. (see the picture – that’s Stew being ecstatic)
When he got off the phone he told me that the client wants to pay us additionally for the extra work we’ve been putting into their project. Wow, I thought- that’s a client that sees the value of partnership.
In a time like this, when all budgets are squeezed, it simple to put all of the outsourced services into one expense bucket, and squeeze them all. The reality however is that there is a big difference between vendors and partners. Vendors are commodities that add little additional value. Partners are strategic and add value in focusing their resources on the client’s goals, and loosing one can be very painful on both short term and long term levels. Treating partners like vendors is a mistake, and we’re thankful that our clients treat us like partners and get that same treatment in return.
The fact is, we’re human and the quality of our relationships is reflected in how we service our clients. Let’s face it, not every client gets the same attention and nice guys don’t finish last – they finish first here. Few of our clients bark (we weed those out in the sale qualification process) and we work with some great clients – with over half here in Vermont. Vermonters have a strong sense of value and fairness – and believe me, they never pay a penny more than they should. That fact has forced us to deliver an exceptional product at an awesome price. On top of that we treat clients as the partners we hope to be to them.
To my fellow agency folks, my advise is that treat your customers as you want to be treated and they will do you right. If they don’t… loose them.
To my clients… thanks partner.
Very well put Dave.
A purchasing guy I know is fond of saying “Vendors sell Hot Dogs, we are looking for Partners”