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Watched a competitor lose 3 accounts in one week at the Chicago trade show because of one thing he said on stage | Business Growth - Babble Community

gavinb97•23d ago

Watched a competitor lose 3 accounts in one week at the Chicago trade show because of one thing he said on stage

I was at the Small Business Expo in Chicago back in March, sitting in the third row for a panel on client retention. Guy next to me runs a 12 person marketing shop out in Naperville. During the Q and A he stood up and asked the panel how to handle clients who "don't get it" and need everything explained twice. The whole room went quiet. One of the panelists (she runs a $4M agency in Austin) just said "we don't take those clients" and moved on. Well he kept going, said something like "yeah but some of these people literally can't follow a simple email." Two guys in front of me were on their phones immediately. Found out later they were both prospects of his. He lost them plus another one from a referral in the same week. All because he couldn't stop himself from venting in a room full of potential clients. Here is what I took away from it. Your reputation is doing business development for you or against you every single day and you don't get to pick when. That guy probably ran a fine shop. But the second he showed contempt for the exact people who pay him, he was done. I went home and looked at my own emails and realized I had a line in my pricing doc that basically blamed clients for not reading it. Changed it that night. So my question for you all, have you ever caught yourself saying something in a public setting that you didn't realize was sinking your rep until later? Or seen someone else do it and just cringe?

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1 Comment

lunaf6723d ago

That line about reputation doing business development for you or against you every day really stuck with me. I read a thing from a sales coach once that said clients don't remember what you said, they remember how you made them feel, and that guy on stage made a whole room full of paying customers feel dumb. Venting feels good for about ten seconds and then it costs you deals you never even knew you were in the running for.