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Everybody has had that moment of pause when contacted by a potential new client. There’s something about this person that doesn’t seem quite right, something just a little off, and you can’t help but feel that they might not be best for your company. However, times are tough, new clients are scarce, and it’s usually a bad idea to turn down a potential source of income based on nothing more than a gut feeling.

When you get a client that you are unsure of, try asking them some fairly simple questions which will help you better understand who they are and what they’re looking for.

1. How did you find me? This first question is by far the most important. If they’ve been recommended by somebody else in the field, then you have somebody else you can ask about this person. If they’re responding to your advertising, at least you know they are consumers of the kind of media that you advertise in. Knowing how they came across you goes a long way in establishing their bone fides that they are legitimate clients.
2. Have you ever worked with somebody in this industry before? Again, this is a good way to find a potential reference for this client. If they haven’t worked with anybody in the field before, find out why they’re suddenly coming to you. If they have, find out why they’ve decided to seek you out instead of continuing with their current professional.
3. Was your previous experience helpful? If it wasn’t, this should be a major red flag. Why would your services be any better than the person before you? If they were good and helpful, why find a new person? Knowing if they were actually able to take advantage of the skills of somebody in your field will go a long way toward actually helping them and give you an idea if the reason they’re changing professionals is because of them.
4. What did and didn’t work about your last experience? This last is important, since it’s not just about what happened that caused the breakdown of the previous working relationship. It’s about how you can, if this person turns out to be a legitimate client, improve on their previous experience.

And that seems to be part of the purpose of these questions. Not only will they give you a basic idea of who you’re working with and a lot of information that can help you make a decision if this is the kind of client you’re looking to work with, they can also give you an idea of how to succeed where others have failed.

You should always trust yourself when it comes to screening new clients. It won’t always be easy to do, but it’s better than taking a risk that may have an adverse affect on your business. Asking a few simple questions could go a long way toward putting your mind at ease or confirming your suspicions. Either way, it’ll be better for your company to take the time to be careful.

So, you’ve worked hard for several years now. You’ve built up your business from nothing, creating a company that rests firmly on the standards of low cost, quality…whatever. You saw an opportunity and you took advantage of it, and now you’ve got a great business at your command that’s…starting to lose revenue. What happened?

So often in business we see success as a goal, something to focus on and achieve. The question becomes, once we achieve it, now what? So you’re a big success, your company is well known and doing great, does that mean you keep doing what you’re doing? Absolutely not.

In business, it’s not a matter of not fixing what’s not broken, it’s a matter of continuing to move forward before something breaks. It’s easy for us to believe that once we’ve accomplished our goals it’s smooth sailing from here on out, but if your company doesn’t continue to innovate or moves away from the standards that made it a success in the first place, it can and will still fail.

Look at Microsoft for a moment. While I never liked IE, they found a way to make it the premiere browser worldwide, primarily by integrating it into their OS. Good move on their part, and they drove Netscape into obscurity. Then they got lazy, assuming that nobody could possibly intrude on their browser supremacy. Which is when Mozilla arrived on the scene with a quicker, more user-friendly, more adaptable browser and suddenly Microsoft had to scramble to catch up to features like tabbed browsing. Now Mozilla commands a quarter of the browsing market.

Worse than not innovating is allowing your quality to slip. This is a trend I see a lot in companies who feel that they’ve done so well and become such a widely recognized commodity that they feel they can start cutting corners and lose track of what made them a success in the first place. How many of my readers remember A&Ps? How about Woolworth’s? Anyone ever fly TWA or drive a Studebaker? For my younger readers, ever shopped at a Circuit City location? No matter how big and well known your company is, it can still go under.

On a recent trip to Savannah I passed by The Lady and Sons (celebrity chef Paula Dean’s first restaurant) and noticed the misters installed to keep lines of customers cool while waiting to be seated. I asked about it and was informed by my resident friend that while this famous place that was built from a bagged lunch business used to be excellent, since Deen abandoned watching the day-to-day operations, the food and service quality have gone way down hill, and they basically survive on the publicity garnered by their famous owner. So much so that employees have to learn more about the face of the restaurant than the food served there.

There’s nothing saying that if you build an enterprise from scratch or even build it up from where you got it that you don’t deserve to enjoy your success, but if you feel that success means no longer running your business or trying to improve it (without over-extending yourself, but that’s another article), then it’s time to sell the business or pass it along to somebody who will continue to grow it while you happily relax and enjoy the fruits of your labor.

I’m a progressive by nature. I like to see things move forward, technology advance, people adopt new ideas that can be used to benefit all people. Which is why I’m completely astounded and flabbergasted every time I see people trying to take a new technology and cram it, wholesale, into an old business model.

Now, I understand why they’re doing this: the old way works. It makes money. New products require old timers like me to either come up with new ways to profit from them, or hire somebody younger to come up with those new ways for us. Neither option is attractive when the first fails and the second feels far too much like admitting defeat.

I recently read a post from Charles Day, one of our friends from The Lookinglass Blog, in which he describes an experience that he had with his cell phone provider attempting to provide “customer service.” Honestly, the attempt is laughable and I highly recommend reading the entire transcript.

However, while reading said transcript I couldn’t help but fall into an almost transient state of déjà vu. I remember having the exact same conversation a long time ago, it must have been the mid-90’s, maybe earlier (memory is the first thing to go). It wasn’t in text, but rather over the phone, and I was trying to understand why my phone provider required an extra charge for this thing called “call waiting” when it clearly states on my bill that it is “included.”

It seems that the definition of the word “included” hasn’t changed much, and continues to be “not a part of your plan.” However, the marked similarity with which Verizon is attempting to defraud their customers with antonyms and how my local company did strikes me as an attempt to maintain a business model based on conflicting and confusing terminology. It’s gotten worse over the years (look for a future post on credit card legislation), but the primary function remains unchanged. Couple that with consistent debates on whether to open cell phones to telemarketers or create a “cell phone listing,” and you have comfortable people trying to make the world feel like it did when they were younger and more in control.

It’s time to let go and accept that you’re moving on. There’s nothing wrong with it, and nobody is suggesting that you get on an ice flow and wave goodbye to your friends and family, but if you’re not willing to progress with the market, holding it back artificially is not going to do anything. It’s a losing strategy, and short-term returns will only translate into major long-term losses.

I’ve often heard small business owners wonder how to cut their capital output. All businesses have a finite amount of money to work with, so smart practices that help them spend less of it are always in demand. That’s why programs like service exchanges are such a good idea.

For those who haven’t heard of it before, a service exchange is where two businesses, rather than charge one another directly for complimentary services, perform the functions of their business for one another instead.  For example, a cleaning company might do monthly carpet treatments for a consulting firm that pays them in discounted or free service.

Now, the big problem with this is that there is a certain outset of money involved in service exchange. Our example cleaning company still needs to pay its cleaners, buy solutions, move their supplies, etc. The consulting firm has to spend time and resources developing strategies. However, the time and supplies are still a small fraction of what full charge would otherwise be for what they are receiving, especially new businesses that may not have a lot of business yet to keep them busy.

More important than the monetary incentive is the social one. No business can thrive on its own. It requires the good service of other companies, people who it depends on for resources. I wouldn’t suggest that any company wouldn’t do its job when being paid for the service, however too much distance between a company and a supplier means they have no personal incentive to go above and beyond for you. Service exchanges cut down on monetary gain, but they create a close relationship with a supplier who may be able to help you with referrals or at the very least will work harder to recognize the “favor” you’re doing them.

It may mean working for less or even for free, but a service exchange encourages communication between businesses and gives you an opportunity to do what you do best in exchange for what somebody else does. Moreover, the savings in capital outlay will add up very quickly.

I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in the corporate world of late. As companies grow larger, become multinational conglomerations, push out local businesses, and generally change from a collection of businessmen and women into an entity, they’ve found new, more elaborate ways to divorce themselves from their customers.

I’m sure they all have reasons for this. Some do it in the name of efficiency and progress, arguing that increased computer-assisted help cuts down on hold times for common questions, making it more and more difficult to find an actual person to help you not just over the phone or the internet, but in physical locations as well. A few companies will say that they simply can’t afford to provide the customer service needed for the size that they’ve grown without a huge expenditure of capital. There are even corporations who unabashedly insist that customer service is not important in light of lower prices.

All of these arguments are poor excuses for what is essentially a desire to avoid having to deal with the repercussions of business decisions. I’m not suggesting that huge companies are looking for ways to swindle consumers like the robber barons of the 20s and 30s and get away with it, but rather that it is impossible to please everybody, and any decision a company makes will cause a certain part of their customer base to balk. The time and effort that it takes to address the concerns of customers and clients is by no means miniscule, and one could easily spend all of their time addressing every single concern.

However, the answer is not to develop labrythine systems designed to avoid the problem. The answer is to recognize that every individual problem is separate from the one before and, while offering computer-assisted solutions, make sure that you have a staff of human beings trained to deal with whatever problems may arise. If your company is too large to do this, then your company is too large.

No company, to my knowledge, has found a successful business model that did not, at one point or another, rely on consumers to generate cash flow. The nature of trade is that it is done between people. That’s how it was done when I was growing up and how it will continue to be done. Separating yourself from your customers is a short-term solution that encourages poor service, bad products, and eventually profit loss.

Regardless of how big or small your business is, think in the long term. The money you save cutting corners on customer service will eventually be money you wish you’d have spent.