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Keeping Your Cool in Times of Conflict
Recently, in an effort to provide you with day-to-day solutions, we asked for your client conflict
horror stories. To help you deal with some of the stressful situations that may arise, we consulted
Michael Marmur, Managing Director of Michael Marmur & Associates (www.mmbusinessadvisor.com),
a Toronto-based firm specialising in business dispute resolution for partners, corporations and
family businesses in conflict.
Below we've listed a sampling of the submissions we received, along with Marmur's commentary. A
natural problem solver, Marmur tells us client disputes and misunderstandings can often be resolved –
or at least alleviated – with a little objectivity and common sense.
Against your better judgement.
The situation: I'm an Account Executive in the printing business. The nature of the printing business
is that we do not always deal directly with the customer. In this particular situation, an advertising
agency was representing the end customer. The ad agency sent us the specifications for a print job
– we told them that based on their specs, the print job would not look good and that we did not think
they would be happy with the end result. Regardless of our advice, the customer wanted to move
forward. Although we felt that it would not look great, we printed the job anyway. I am sure you
can guess what happened – the ad agency and their customer were not happy with the print job. Now
they do not want to pay. My company is ready to fight this one and is ready to send it to
collection. What advice would you give me? (P.S. I should have mentioned that this is the first
time we have dealt with this ad agency and I believe there is a lot of business potential from
their other clients.)
The advice: Before reading this answer, stop and take fifteen seconds to think about what you would advise
the account executive. Ask yourself – why doesn't he see it the way you do?
The account executive must first decide what type of relationship, if any, he wants with the ad agency
in the future – this will drive his actions today. If he wants more of their business, he needs to
develop a solution that everyone can live with – without sending the invoice to collection, even if he
believes he is “right” and is owed the money. If he doesn't care about future transactions, he can try
to collect as much as he can – realizing that he will never get any business from the ad agency
or anyone they know).
But there seems to be a high likelihood for future business. If the relationship has not yet been poisoned
then it can make sense to do the following:
Do not ask the end customer to pay for the mistake. The printer and the ad agency should have known
better – they are the experts. The message to the customer is – we will redo this, at no additional cost
and without delay.
Work hard to negotiate a fair agreement with the ad agency on the issue of who pays for the mistake. Even
with a redo, the printer will likely lose money. Try to get the ad agency to contribute toward the
reprint – the ad agency should not make any money on this transaction.
The lesson learned for the printer (or anyone else) – if you knew the job would not come out right, you
should have refused to print it. This particular sales opportunity falls into the category
of “bad business”.
So why can't the account executive and his company “see it”. As is typically the case, he is thinking
with his heart and not his head. He believes he and his company did nothing wrong, and therefore
should not suffer.
It's natural to react with emotion in stressful situations since you certainly have a vested
interest – but salespeople, in any industry, would do well to take a deep breath, and attempt
to look at their situation objectively, or even from the other point of view, before they act
on impulse. Try to map out the outcomes of the action you are taking today.Think about how
your business will be impacted. By thinking consequentially, you will save yourself grief
down the road. (I call this Consequential Analysis ® – which is really applying common sense
to your day-to-day thinking.)
Sometime you just have to say no
The situation: My company sells aluminium for the construction market. Our dealers send “take-offs” of
material that they want quoted, which sometimes consist of many items. Because the quote is usually quite
large, we quote a package price including all the required items at one competitive price. In this
case, after the price was faxed, the customer wanted a break out price of all the items in case he
had to order some more material for the project. But if we break out the price, he will use this price
on all other projects he is quoting even if the project is much smaller. I explained to him that when
you purchase a $40,000 car and than get a price to buy the car piece by piece the price would far
exceed the original price of the car. Displeased, the customer left repeated messages about how
disappointed he was in our pricing methods and that he would not deal with our company again.
I phoned him back and told him that under no circumstances will we break out the price. I
explained all the value-added services and distinct product advantages that our company offers.
We also talked about a list-down pricing method, which he finally agreed to. The customer has
since placed two more orders. By deflecting the pricing issue he realised that our company
offered more than just price.
The advice: If you put yourself in your customer's shoes, you may have a better idea of what to do. It
is highly likely that a construction company placing a large order for a project may need extra items
later. By offering them unit pricing (at full prices) when quoting the package price, you will minimise
the likelihood of future problems. (I highly doubt that the customer would have questioned unit pricing
that did not add up to the package price.)
Recommended action: If this is an important customer – a face-to-face meeting would be a great idea to make
sure that there are no underlying bad feelings – regardless of whether they placed two additional orders.
Knowing where you stand isn't always obvious
The situation: Two years ago a colleague and I had gone into a meeting that was to be a routine 30-minute
review of the previous month. The customer was our largest and we were coming up to contract review. About
twenty minutes into the review, I asked what I thought was an innocent question. The customer launched
into a rant about our levels of service, the ordering process and how we were managing the account.
Sensing there was an issue my colleague and I sat quietly and listened. Where appropriate we took notes.
We kept asking: Anything else? Three hours later we broke for lunch.
After lunch we created a plan of action for the next two weeks. From that we arranged a full-day planning
session in which we addressed all the issues the client had raised. We learned in that meeting that we were
about to loose the account and that we were going out to RFP. We were under the assumption that we would
renew the account for another three years. The initial reaction in a meeting like this would be to engage
with the client and argue your point. Fortunately both of us that day were senior reps and had the sense
to sit and listen – in this case for three hours. The result was very eye opening for our company. We
truly knew where we stood with the account after that meeting. We changed the account rep shortly
afterward. We didn't loose the account, however, we had to go through the RFP process, a process
that took a lot of time and effort, as we could not assume anything based on what we now knew. We
also had to work very hard to earn back the trust of our customer that we were capable of doing
the job for them. It was a very humbling experience and one I don't want to repeat.
The advice: What can we learn from this? There was an underlying problem that no one seemed to know about
– until it was too late. Fortunately the senior reps from the company were able to salvage the situation.
But at what cost to the company? You can imagine the scrambling to complete the RFP and the sleepless
nights waiting for the response. After all, this was their largest customer.
If you are a sales manager, president or business owner don't assume that everything is OK with your
largest best or most important customer, unless you can afford to lose them.
Recommended action: Review your list of important customers. Make it your business to get in front of
them before it is too late. You already know that you will learn something by calling on them
– or maybe even get an extra sale!
Do you have any comments, questions or concerns? Please write to Michael Marmur
at mm@mmbusinessadvisor.com. Or even better, send in the details of a dispute or conflict you
are experiencing.
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