Is it just me...

[jimbairn]

...or have you had any or all of the following happen to you in business?

You go for a meeting with a new client which is very positive, productive and friendly. You go back the following week and are introduced to the client's partner/wife/offspring who is generally hostile, unhelpful and rubbishes all your ideas and the job doesn't go ahead.

You build up a very good working relationship with someone at a company until you turn up one day and find that he's been tranferred/had a heart attack and is off on sick leave/ and has been replaced by someone who is generally hostile, unhelpful and rubbishes all your ideas and the job doesn't go ahead.

(especially for graphic designers) You are contacted by someone to go and discuss designing a brochure. The morning before the meeting they pobe you back to cancel the meeting because their twelve year old nephew has a computer and they're going to be designing it for nothing.

[DuaneJackson]

HAd all of that. I've heard a good saying about that last one where friends/nephews do it for nothing "Your best friend is my worst enemy"

[fastfences]

Hi Jim,
Have you ever considered your 'closing skills' may need a little honing? Had these deals originally been done 'on the spot' you wouldn't be suffering this heartbreak. :lol:
Cheers, Nigel

[magic-merl]

@Fastfences

Chill out. Humour is pretty rife in this mail.

However he does have a point.

[Coding Monkey]

I was contacted by a company that kindly had in the CC field all of those that they had also contacted. The list was incredible. It was just an honour to even be on the list, because they didn't just pick them out of thin air, but picked those companies on that CC list as the best web designers you could find. Some had done work for Coca-Cola, others Barclays and so on. Anyway, to the point - no one got the contract. One of the directors gave it to their nephew who was learning web design.

[clairemackaness]

All of the above!

[10 Yetis]

yep... it is one of the parts of running your business that falls under the catagory of "character building".

Similar to the opening sentances I sometimes get that start, "I don't don't trust marketing or PR people"... and this is from people who pro-actively ring us.

Solution = smile, nod and move on.

[Rob Holmes]

The worst for me is being dropped for one of your competitors that you know is awful.

I'm not the best salesman as I'm more techy/geek but I know my customer service levels and systems are among the top in the industry - and it kills me that I lose hosting contracts to people who have a better image but I know they have a worse service.

</rant>

Rob

[creacom]

Yeah been there bought the t-shirt and then burnt it !! :lol:

As 10 Yetis said its "character bulding", you learn from it and move on. There are things like that and whne you focus too much on them they start to eat away at all the positive aspects too.

Jacqui

[Rob Holmes]

Yup - agreed :)

R

[Ozzy]

What used to annoy me is when I was a new business some of the bigger "potential" clients wouldn't deal with my company because they didn't believe I could do the job. Sadly this is the same problem a lot of new businesses have :(

[jimbairn]

Then there's the one I came across just this weekend. As you know, part of my business is cartoon portraits based on photographs. When people enuire I emphasise that these must be recent photographs. This weekend I sent out two emailed proofs of cartoons to have them eturned with "Oh he/she doesn't look like the potograph any more. His/her hair is grey/more receding/shorter"...