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68 • The 100 Greatest Ideas for Building the Business of Your Dreams

You may have dreadful conflicts of priorities at this time. When you are in-
volved in delivering or implementing, you are not involved in selling. In a small
business this leads to peaks and troughs of orders and deliveries with the subsequent
cashflow problems. But then, if you keep selling and don't deliver, you will eventu-
ally come unstuck anyway. The goal is to do business with the customer frequently
and for ever. It is a waste of time to try to develop a customer if there is any sugges-
tion of dissatisfaction. You have to see the effort involved as building for future
orders as well as delivering today's.

Make sure that the person taking responsibility for delivery does not form so
cosy a relationship with the customer that they become an oasis of competence, at
least in their view, in a desert of your business's cackhandedness. I have often seen
project managers with good relationships with their customers fall into the trap of
blaming their people or their company for any shortfalls in performance and not
taking accountability themselves.

This is a short-term attitude and in the extreme leads to a situation where the
customer puts his arm round your shoulder, if you are such a project manager, and
explains that while he has no problem with you, the supplying organisation is not up
to it and he is going elsewhere.

Idea 43 - Take lost business very seriously

From time to time you or your people will drop the ball. If this causes you to lose a
customer, take it very seriously. Ask politely but firmly for a meeting with the most
senior person on the customer's side who had some involvement with the decision.
You may have to write a letter to make this happen, since a telephone call can make
you sound aggressive. Make sure the letter accepts the decision that has been made.
Don't look as though you are trying to reopen the sales campaign.

At the meeting itself try not to go defensive or argumentative. Remember, the
customer has made the right decision. They are convinced of that so you may as