Lipton's Cup of Knowledge*:

My wife and I decided to do some major front yard landscaping including widening our driveway. As per usual, I reached out to my colleges, friends, and even a few local businesses in the industry for referrals. I spoke to no less than 12 companies and had these landscapers come to my house to quote on a relatively decent sized project. Of the 12, not one company was professional enough to follow-up with me and or provide an actual quote.

The bizarre part is that they each spent an hour talking about ideas, giving me suggestions, measuring things, taking pictures, and even provided me with brochures and references. At that point they would tell me they wanted to calculate a price, and that they would get back to me. Next thing you know, I never heard back from them.

As I learned over time, landscapers prefer to do really big jobs over residential work, but if you don't want the job, at least be courteous enough to call me and close the interaction.

On a bit of a tangent:

This reminds me of a project we ran several years ago, where a hotel manager was concerned about the behavior of his sales people. Business for the hotel was very cyclical, and in times of feast the sales staff were so busy they didn't even bother following up with customers, who's dates they knew they could not accommodate. Several months later, during times of famine; when the hotel was less busy, the sales associates would call up all of the customers, some of whom had been ignored just months prior. When these customers were finally called they were infuriated by bad customer service and no longer wanted to do business with the hotel. This was becoming a major problem for the hotel, as you can expect, when many conferences, stays, and restaurant visits are returning customers. Bad customer service can kill your reputation.

Whether or not you are actually getting a piece of business, it would behoove anyone to follow up and provide the customer with a positive phone call just explaining the situation. As a customer, I prefer transparency and I want to feel included in the process. I really hate having to wait for someone else to fill me in, especially if I feel they already have the information and are just stringing me along. By acting unprofessionally someone can easily lose my business and therefore, lose all of my future business and potential referrals.

As it turns out, with the landscaping we did, we didn't even end up getting it done until late in the season, which is when most of these companies are looking to keep workers busy. In essence we might have been ideal customers for a busy landscaping company who's business slows in the fall.

In sales and business if there is one thing I have learned it is that you should always be trying to offer some type of solution. Let the customer turn you down, not the opposite.

*Events Experienced by David Lipton and written about by Leah Krangle