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“As soon as I can find an alternative,
I’m going to fire them. We’ve had nothing but
problems. All my other manufacturing vendors have established some
type of rapport by their presence out here. The only time we have
a rep from (this supplier) out here is to fix something. Their shipments
are late, their error rate is high, and they pass blame rather than
own up to their mistakes. We’ve paid them a lot of money getting
this just-in-time program going, and we’re trying everything
we can to make sure it works. That’s why we’ve continued
to put up with below-par performance, but I’ve about had it.”
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Speaker: Senior Vice President, national high-tech
firm
Background: This multi-million-dollar account was on the
verge of leaving our client and going elsewhere for their
products, yet the president knew nothing about it. He was
such a fearsome person the salesman didn’t want to risk
getting blamed for problems caused elsewhere in the organization,
so he kept silent. As soon as this interview was over we called
the president to summarize what we’d just heard. The
company immediately isolated and solved the problems and saved
this important account. To quote the president after the dust
had settled, “We dissected that relationship and put
it back together again. Now they are one of our best customers.”
The customer backed that up. We interviewed this account again
the following year. This same Senior Vice President said in
the follow-up interview, “They
went from being a nightmare of a vendor to my best over night.
They’re perfect now.” |
“After that last blown order, we informed our account
manager Pat that we were sending out RFQs to do a price comparison.
Pat never even indicated that they were going to re-evaluate our
pricing. We’ve now selected another
vendor based on price and quality. They don’t know
I dropped them yet. Let me be the one to tell them.”
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Speaker: Purchasing Manager, financial services
firm
Background: Sometimes we find out in an interview that a
supplier’s customer is really a former customer. This
surprise loss was a crushing blow to a commodity supplier
that, on the whole, was viewed as responsive by most of its
customers. Maybe other customers were squeaky wheels. She
wasn’t. Lack of responsiveness was both a pattern and
the last straw for this customer. The good-natured purchasing
manager listed four mis-steps in quality and communication
she’d tolerated before the RFQ she referred to was ignored.
A quality control program that tracks rework by customer thus
alerting account managers to accounts that require special
attention might have prevented this loss. |
“The current contract is at risk, in my opinion. If
we don’t redo it, then we’ll have to figure out ways
to unwind it. There are obviously ramifications for that, too. I’m
not getting the sense that either party wants to do that. I’m
just frustrated with what in my opinion is foot-dragging. To put
it bluntly, the current relationship as reflected in the current
contract is not acceptable to us. If they
don’t change it, we would be looking to end the relationship.”
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Speaker: Chief Operating Officer, consumer
services firm
Background: We were told that our agenda with this COO was
to “straighten him out” so the vendor who’d
hired us could run billings up to the full $12 million they
thought they’d been awarded. The vendor saw the contractual
relationship requiring one set of activities from each party,
but their customer (the COO quoted above) recognized that
circumstances had changed in a fundamental way scaling back
the scope of the agreement. The vendor was “in denial”
about the changed circumstances. Once we told the vendor of
the COO’s willingness to cancel their contract, a new,
mutually workable contract was quickly drawn up. The vendor
had to scale back their billings expectations to meet a new
reality, but they didn’t lose the relationship, and
they had been perilously close. |
“One of the services they provide us with is weekly
sales-activity reports for our business. It would be cheaper to
produce the reports in-house. At some point we might be able to
handle this kind of sophisticated Information Systems reporting,
but Hell will freeze over first!”
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Speaker: Senior Vice President, Fortune 500
high-tech firm
Background: Not every astonishing quote is negative. A service-bureau
client of ours wasn’t willing to push a key customer
for an early verdict on whether their existing contract would
be renewed four months hence. As a neutral third party, we
could weave the question about the contract naturally into
the conversation. Our client was overjoyed to hear this lucrative
contract was going to be renewed! |
“My expectations about the timetable weren’t
even close to being met. We tried to make contact three or four
times after they were first here to find out where we were going
next and who was supposed to do what. It was tough to get satisfactory
answers. If I were going into it again and I were them, I’d
manage the client’s expectations up front, especially on a
first engagement.”
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Speaker: Senior Vice President, national consumer
products firm
Background: This professional services firm was astonished
to hear this feedback. In his face-to-face meetings, the Senior
Vice President quoted here had given the professional services
firm no clear indication he thought they were mishandling
his account. Our client took immediate action and turned the
relationship around. |
“We needed a product they offered. I called them up
and they shipped it just fine. Then I tried to reorder it. Getting
them to do anything was basically impossible. We
almost shut down our production line because of their lack of responsiveness.
I called, I left messages, I faxed a PO over; I did everything I
thought I could do to help them out. That was the first time I ever
had to call and ask for someone’s manager to get some help.
Since then, we’ve gone elsewhere.”
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Speaker: Purchasing Manager, consumer products
firm
Background: We’re good, but sometimes we’re brought
in too late, as with this account. Our client wasn’t
able to win this customer back, but it motivated them to improve
their customer-service training. We’ve determined through
subsequent engagements that their customer-service training
has been effective. |
“I am generally skeptical of consulting firms because
I think lots of times you have to bring them up the learning curve
on your business, and then they don’t add a whole lot of value.
[This particular firm] has brought us up the learning curve instead.
I’m impressed with their depth of knowledge
and experience. Also, they’ve got it packaged up in
a way that communicates the information well without making you
feel stupid about not already knowing it.”
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Speaker: Division Manager, Fortune 500 high-tech
firm
Background: Our client in this case is a consulting firm.
They incorporate feedback from our interviews with their customers
into their marketing material. They compete with much larger
firms and use their stellar reputation for delivering value
as a way to differentiate themselves from the competition. |
Some CEOs question the value of engaging a consulting firm to solicit
and analyze customer feedback. They say to themselves, “My
sales teams are very close to our customers. I know what’s
going on in all our major accounts.” Maybe. But who do you
hire: people skilled in discussing long-term strategies with financial
decision-makers, or commissioned order-takers who call on buyers?
Just how sound is the customer intelligence you’ve staked
your company’s future on?
If your company is dependent on a small number of customers for
the bulk of its revenue, it only takes one loss to ruin your revenue
projections. Call us to find out if there
are any “astonishing quotes” on the tips of your customers’
tongues.
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