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Business Owners Are Worst Clients

zencapital.substack.com

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Re: Business Owners Are Worst Clients

#51

Post by m463 »

A friend of mine worked for the airlines when he was young.

He said that airlines disservice customers all the time - delayed or cancelled flights, problems with luggage, everything.

He worked with most people just fine to get through things.

Except for one group of customers. First Class. If you disservice a first class customers, they get MAD.

My take is that the people paying the bills, their expectations might reach the size of the bills, and if the bills are large, so are the expectations.

Re: Business Owners Are Worst Clients

#52

Post by mday27 »

Aurornis wrote: post #35

I was assigned to support sales people in a job long ago. I learned a lot about sales but it was enlightening to see their strategies for maximizing their reward to effort ratio. A key strategy was to find someone in the company with decision making power or influence but who also was not really spending their own money/budget directly. You were wasting your time talking to anyone without power to make or influence d…

this is a pretty brilliant analysis that I've never heard before, and it definitely rings true to my experience as a freelancer

Re: Business Owners Are Worst Clients

#53

Post by throwaway81523 »

lelanthran wrote: post #15
jeffbee wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the selection may run the other way (or both ways). The population of small business owner-operators is disproportionately stocked with people who don't get along well with other people, who selected themselves out of having to deal with an organization of peers.

How many small business owners do you know? All the ones I have dealt with have survived precisely because of their ability to get along with people. If you have no people skills your small business will fail.

> If you have no people skills your small business will fail.

In fact a lot of them do fail, maybe not coincidence. Also, "people skills" in some cases means being a manipulative sociopath.

Re: Business Owners Are Worst Clients

#55

Post by aworks »

Aurornis wrote: post #35

I was assigned to support sales people in a job long ago. I learned a lot about sales but it was enlightening to see their strategies for maximizing their reward to effort ratio. A key strategy was to find someone in the company with decision making power or influence but who also was not really spending their own money/budget directly. You were wasting your time talking to anyone without power to make or influence d…

I worked for a company that focused on top-down software sales, albeit to Fortune 500 companies. Align with the highest person you can in the organization, sell them and then support the engineers with high-touch support after the product was forced on them. It kind of worked.

Re: Business Owners Are Worst Clients

#56

Post by silexia »

I own a much larger agency than this guy and I don't understand his post at all. ALL of our customers in a marketing agency are business owners, though sometimes they may assign a point of contact.

Business owners hold us accountable and that is right and good.

Re: Business Owners Are Worst Clients

#57

Post by silexia »

Aurornis wrote: post #35

I was assigned to support sales people in a job long ago. I learned a lot about sales but it was enlightening to see their strategies for maximizing their reward to effort ratio. A key strategy was to find someone in the company with decision making power or influence but who also was not really spending their own money/budget directly. You were wasting your time talking to anyone without power to make or influence d…

This is why capitalism created the most value and biggest pie for everyone- it is the only system with accountability.
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