If you’ve run your own company for any length of time you will know that generating new prospects and converting them into paying clients is the most expensive part of growing any business.

Yet selling more to existing clients costs 5 to 9 times LESS, and is actually an easier sell because the client has already been involved buying from you. As long as they have had a good experience, they are more likely to buy again.

So why is it that people INSIST on driving their customers away?

To give you some examples which may seem familiar to you, here are a few of the things I’ve seen just in the past few weeks…

• A restaurant I went to the other night for dinner with friends had serving staff who were so rude I will NEVER go back (and I won’t be recommending them either)
• A franchise opportunity where the franchisor didn’t answer phone calls or respond to emails, even though a friend of mine had spoken to them once and already expressed an interest in spending £60,000 to buy a License (they kept my friend waiting for nearly a week and when they finally contacted him, it was only to say they were “too busy” to have the meeting!)
• A well known mobile phone provider where the Customers Services representative actually called my partner ‘a liar’ regarding an upgrade request she had previously placed for a new mobile phone (then the girl found the detail already on her computer system but I think she forgot the call was being recorded!)
• A hotel which is actively being marketed as a place with “Good Coffee and Quiet Meeting Environment” to encourage business people to meet there, but where they serve you pre-made (and quite disgusting) coffee. (I like my coffee…)
• A major Energy Provider who sent a number of threatening letters to a friend of mine just before Christmas, to pay an electricity bill for £3,425.37 which they later admitted had been sent to the wrong person in error.

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We all want to believe that the majority of people we deal with are honest… and generally, most people are.

But when push comes to shove over money, relationships and trust can take a completely different meaning – even “good” friendships can quickly turned sour, as I found out to my cost.

But before I tell you about that, you need to understand that if you want to do the best you can for your clients and have a truly successful business, then you NEED to build up a solid relationship – you need to build trust.

If you want a business that will survive, DESPITE what the economy is doing, then not only do you need to do better than your competitors at supplying what your clients need, but you must build up trusting relationships with your clients AND your suppliers. They are, after all the ones responsible for getting you where you want to be.

The trouble is that when there is money involved, people have a tendency towards “self-preservation”, and any loyalty or friendship can fly out of the window.

Let me tell you a story which shows you exactly what I mean, and where I suffered because of it…

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