Professionalism Part 2: Don’t Make your Clients Beg you for a Quote
Okay so picture this: you’ve just met with the guy from the kitchen shop, you’ve discussed in detail a new design for your kitchen. The guy is pleasant, professional, knowledgeable and you really like dealing with him.
On leaving his office you ask: “So when can I expect you to send the quote through?”
He replies: “You’ll have it by the end of the week” (it is Monday)
Friday arrives and you still haven’t received a quote. Shame, he must be real busy, I’m sure he’ll send it through on Monday
Monday comes and goes and you still don’t have a quote so you phone him up and politely ask when he’ll be sending your quote through.
“Ah Mrs So-and-so, I was just busy finishing your quote, so sorry for the delay, I’m going to be sending it through shortly.”
It doesn’t come through “shortly” and it doesn’t come through the next day either.
Grrrrrr.
The quote is finally emailed through a week later than expected.
At this point, you’ve lost interest and you’d rather give your business to another company than deal with this tonsil.
Sound familiar? I’m sure we’ve all had the experience of nagging someone for a quote and you’ll know that it’s not a nice experience
If you know you won’t be able to get a quote out in the next week, then just be honest with your client and let them know when they can expect it. Don’t ever make clients beg you for a quote, especially in these hard economic times – all you’re going to do is lose business. If you’re professional, you’ll follow up with potential clients and send quotes out timeously.
AH YES, I have sooo experienced this before and it’s the most annoying thing in the world. I make a point of being realistic these days, if I know I’m busy and it’s going to take 2 weeks to turn a quote around, then I tell the potential client. If I lose the client because of that, then it’s probably not a person I was to service as a client anyway, because imagine how jumpy they’ll be about deadlines and so forth.
It all boils down to managing a client, as long as the client knows what’s going on all the time, there’s never a need to have a problem
Yup, communication is key! And you must be one of the very few people that actually delivers a quote when they say they are going to!
I believe in “What you give, is what you get” and applying that scenario to all things in life is a wise move, in my opinion..
So true and you do that well!
[...] Part 2: Don’t Make Your Client’s Beg You for a Quote [...]
I don’t know what’s going on in the big business world, but I have to beg my suppliers for quotes, for invoices (!), to get back to with regards to a query etc. What’s up with that? Since when is it acceptable to run a business this way? Does the recession not affect them at all? I would think that this is a good time to start looking after your clients!