Befriend your Clients

Recently I had a very bad experience with someone I had contracted to develop a website for me, we had agreed to a work fee of 350,000/= and work would commence on payment of 50%, to which I complied with, unfortunately the website he created for me, is not only dysfunctional, it can do totally nothing of the things I intended for it to do.
To solve this, I set up appointments to meet the young geezer and give him the information he wanted from me, he didn’t turn up for any of these meetings, one time he had the audacity to tell me to go to his office in Ntinda. Who ever heard of such a thing in the service industry. What ticked me off was the fact that every time I asked him to come for his money, he would come running, and when I asked for results he would be doing something else.
The final blow came when he told me he was going to work on my website provided ‘’we do things his way ‘’ seriously!
To cut the long story short, I asked for a refund which he has refused to give sighting absence of a signed contract and time he spent, not withstanding my time he wasted.
This is a typical everyday business experience in the in uganda, especially in the service sector. This young man owns an ‘’IT firm’’ and is gifted in what he does, unfortunately, what he doesn’t know is that;
Talent+bad customer care= no business. period.
It is imperative for the Entrepreneur to court or create an alliance with the client, remember everybody is a customer in one way or the other.
The INTERNAL CUSTOMER
This is that person you work with in that organization, including you. The cleaners, the accountants, the sales people, the managers, the suppliers, the executives, everyone who has a hand in making the business wheels turn from within is the internal customer.
You may ask yourself what it is these guys are buying, they are buying the vision of that organization and they are in turn selling their TIME to the company to achieve that goal or purpose.
These people are very important to the Entrepreneur because they directly affect the vision one has for the company. As the youngest person in the consultancy firm that I once worked with I came up with a couple of interesting business ideas and proposals on how the company could go forward, but I realized there was much resistance because I was young and in their eyes inexperienced.
Instead of allowing frustration to hinder me, I decided to develop a vision and align it to the vision of the company, after which, I begun to ally myself with individuals in this company that would allow for the change that I was seeing in the future, I would take time to listen to the directors, the managers and even the support staff, having gained their trust I could start to influence them in a way that was mutually beneficial to the company and employees.
In common business jargon it is called “buy in’’. John C Maxwell in his book 21 irrefutable laws of leadership says, ‘’if the led like the vision and not the leader they will drop the leader and keep the vision, and if they like the leader and not his vision they will keep the leader and drop his vision.”
You can imagine if you are the leader whose personality and vision the people you lead haven’t bought into. You will be dropped like a cold potato. In light of this, developing an alliance with the people in your organization will allow you to nurture buy in, both into you and into your vision.
It is a common thing for aspiring and ambitious young enthusiasts to become apple brushers and total pains on their way up, this is very counter-intuitive, if you are going to make it to the top your alliances should be balanced and not contrary to one another, remember you don’t want to inherit a split organization.
True success for the Entrepreneur has little or nothing to do with divide and rule, stay away from that.
There is another evil I have noticed under the sun, where super ambitious people pull and trample people on their way up.
This reminds me of an all too common saying, ‘’the people you meet on your way up will be the same you meet on your way down.’’ Imagine you were falling down a ladder strewn with your enemies, none would extend a hand of help, but if you fell down a ladder with friends they could make your fall less impactful.
I would encourage you to make friends on your way up, though remember you cannot please everybody so know your limits.
The EXTERNAL CUSTOMER
This is that person who moves your organizational cogs from the outside, they buy the product of your vision, they are so important that if they took their money elsewhere you would be downright out of business, ask METRO stores.
The Entrepreneur needs this alliance more because the business one desires to take over is dependent on these peoples goodwill.
If you don’t get anything from this article get this, your customer is not only your best friend, they are your spouse, they give you the satisfaction, they put food on your table, they talk nice about you, they bring people into your circles, they tell their children about you(my late grand dad God rest his soul- used Imperial Lather Soap before he got married, when he married my grandmother he bought her imperial lather and forbade her from using any other soap, 50 years later my grandmother still uses the same imperial lather, she passed the tradition over to me, and I intend to pass it on not just because it is a tradition, but the soap is actually good.)
This story brings me to a very important principle, called the lifetime value of a customer. Let me explain it. The true value of a customer is not what they pay you the first time they come to your shop or business premises, or what you see them wearing, clothes, watch, and so on
The first time someone walks into your business, you can’t straight away tell how much they have in the bank, who they have on speed dial, where they stay, what they do and so on. Because looks are deceptive do not allow yourself to draw conclusions on the worth of your customer. In stead like you wouldn’t marry someone you just met, but you take the time to court them, know them and see if they are worth calling your spouse.
From the experience I shared above, about the web designer, he conned me of 200,000/=, because he thought that is what I am worth, the part he missed out is that I have 3 more websites to do this year, and I just was about to get him a web designing contract worth 4 million shillings, but I cut that out of course.
To illustrate this point further I will use the experience my fiancées brother and I had recently when we dropped by a joint on acacia avenue. Being tired, he decided to get a massage but as it was his first time he requested for a special discount, to which they objected. The man went on and had his massage, but by the time he came out, one could think he had been run over by a 5 axle truck, ‘’this has been the worst experience I have ever had, my 5 year old daughter could do a better job’’ was his response when I asked him how it was, of course with a wry smile, seeing the dissatisfaction written allover his face.
Incidentally no one was there to ask him how his first experience had been, all they cared about was that they had taken his 35000/-, they didn’t know that he works and lives nearby and had plans of dropping by every 3 times a week, as I write this I can’t tell you how many workmates he has told not to go there, and am writing about it. Let’s do the math, had he been satisfied or reassured;
3*week*4 weeks*12 months+ 4 friends
35000*3*4*12+(4*35000)=5,190,000 worth of massages.
That is what these people lost just for this one year add it up over his life time. If you were the Entrepreneur this is very substantial money lost because you have not understood the “lifetime value of the customer’’. Why do you think they say customer is king.
“The opportunity cost you attach to the value of a customer could make or break you.”

This brings me to my final submission on allying with the client. In my experience of advertizing and PR I have come to notice that word of mouth is the most influential and credible way of doing publicity.
The twist is that while a happy customer will tell only 5-9 people about their experience, a dissatisfied one will tell not less than 20 people, now watch out if the client is a writer or a TV personality, because they will write or talk about it on radio.
I have had these radio shows where people call in to quarrel, is it called flashing down the drain or something like that, as the Entrepreneur if your customers are your friends you will have avoided this altogether.

The writer is an innovation consultant and co-founder of Wild Ideas Consult and mavericks unlimited.
7thepisode@gmail.com