I’d like your advice. A prospect stood me up this week. When he asked, I declined to offer him another free consultation. What would you have done?
Does it matter how good of a prospect he was? This person was one member of a volunteer committee, just gathering data to take back to the group to convince them to start the process. But should that make a difference?
I’d love to hear your advice and your stories.
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Becky started Small Biz Survival in 2006 to share rural business and community building stories and ideas with other small town business people. She and her husband have a small cattle ranch and are lifelong entrepreneurs. Becky is an international speaker on small business and rural topics.
There’s no excuse for standing someone up. That’s just common courtesy. I think you did the right thing.
Joe, he just forgot. We’ve all done it. He apologized. But I am interested in thinking through the larger questions it brings up.
Two comments from Twitter, and my thoughts:
@tnhuckaby My advice: have so many prospects & profitable projects that one person like this doesn’t matter
I do have a bunch going on, so I’m not depending on this one prospect. That’s what gave me the security to decline a second consult.
@YourGoToGuy I don’t offer free consultations. I charge for that. Problem solved.
When pricing jobs, I choose to build in enough profit to cover the cost of consultations. I don’t think I want to charge for all consultations, though. Certainly, many people do. Hmmm….
Becky,
A friend of mine (financial advisor) had this happen on Wednesday morning. When the guy finally called that evening, my friend agreed to reschedule for the following day.
And the guy stood him up.
Although I also don’t charge for initial consults, it made me think of lawyers, who do. How many people miss an appointment that’s “worth” $250? I’d bet not many.
Even though you don’t write the check until you get there, you still have a sense that you’re putting something very important on your calendar.
An appointment with you or my friend may be worth as much or even more. But I wonder, when you’re putting something “free” on your calendar: maybe it just doesn’t feel the same, no matter how much you need the thing being offered?
Just thinking out loud. You caught me right when it’s been on my mind!
Regards,
Kelly
Kelly, thanks for sharing this story. It add some detail @YourGoToGuy’s policy of charging.
You’ve got me thinking, too.
Most of my initial meetings don’t fall into the ‘consultation’ camp but into ‘backgrounders’ for preparing a more detailed proposal. This means I’m in a ‘sales’ situation and to a certain extent it gives me the freedom to be a little more of a pest than usual. If a meeting was set up more than a week in advance the prospect gets an email reminding them that I’m looking forward to seeing them the next day. That morning they get a call confirming the location and time.
Unfortunately, a prospect that consistently stands you up or irritates is giving a strong indication of what kind of client they will be. The question is, can they pay you enough to make up for it?
Fred, I like the way you are thinking of your initial visit as a backgrounder meeting.
David Burch @YourGoToGuy is living up to his name with two additional resources on this topic:
1. Hourly rates vs. flat fees, a guest post by Mave Gibson on David’s blog.
2. Erin Blaskie’s approach: online video + materials about services combined with telephone consultation
Thank you again, David.
Sherry Miller emailed me her opposing view, from a small town perspective:
“I would have scheduled another consultation. Especially since the person was part of a volunteer organization.. Word of mouth is the best advertising, and it is also the worst thing in a negative sense for a business. By not scheduling another consultation, he goes back to report to his committee, that you were hard to work with. He is not going to see that he was in error for not showing up. This will cause a domino effect on how you treat your prospective customers. The committe will hear this mans side of the story, and make a judgement of your business and character. They will bring it up with others, and so on.
Another thing to note, that on some committees are other business people, whom could possibly be potential customers as well.
Sherry Miller”
This connects with the idea of Island Marketing: every interaction is precious.
So there are the two sides. Which do you agree with?
I think being stood up once isn’t anything to take a stand on. Things happen and suddenly there’s a change or they wrote the appt. down on the wrong day. Or just plain forgot. In some cases when the person who forgot or couldn’t make it happens to be a person of strong inner character you might even have an unexpected advantage in that they may feel a need to somehow “make it up” to you!
That said, being stood up a 2nd time – especially in the case of a free consultation – would likely constitute a reason to forgo future business interaction. (Barring a note from a doctor or some other school-day like reason beyond “the dog ate my homework”!)
Kelly’s comment about people attaching more value to something they have to pay for is correct technically. But in today’s open-ended world of transparency, I think it’s hard to get around certain aspects of “free-conomics”, such as the free consultation. Or even sharing “trade secrets” via blog. It’s more important than ever to earn trust by showing value before people start actually investing their money in you! In doing so there will be times where your generosity gets taken advantage of, or you get stood up intentionally. But trying to cover up for a few jerks is not nearly reason enough to not be the very best and most open you can be to the many others who appreciate what you bring to the table! And might soon be willing to pay for that.
Hi Becky — This is a tough one. I might or might not agree to a second date, depending on how the person reacted (apologized) after wasting my time. But unless they had a really good reason for it, it’s probably not a good sign.
Steve, you’ve added a lot of thought. It does go towards earning trust. And that applies to me and the client, doesn’t it?
Daria, this is what I was getting at in offering a bit of info on the type of prospect. How much should we let that influence our decisions?
Great question, Becky. In our 16+ years in business, although we have been on the receiving end of this rarely, it has always triggered my intuition and a gut feeling that if they can’t make the first appointment, what kind of responsibility will they show down the road, in a working relationship? And, a volunteer? Well, that should have no bearing. We have always treated our pro bono and volunteer projects with the same commitments we make to paying clients.
BUT about two months ago, my husband and biz partner somehow was distracted and didn’t get an appointment down. He was actually in the area of this prospect that day with several other meetings, but spaced this one out. That never happens! It produced a shift in my thinking. Stuff happens! But a second time, probably would write them off.
Judy, thanks for sharing both sides from your experiences.
@MDY added on Twitter,
“I would have rescheduled, but I would not move any existing commitments to reschedule earlier than convenient”
I do want to add that I’m not holding his volunteer status against him. But I do know a bit about this group overall, and I took that into consideration.
I try always to be so understanding that whatever embarrassment the prospect initially felt is increased, then I set the next appointment. This almost always leads to a good meeting and a serious hearing for your proposal. A breach of courtesy toward you, if unintentional, gives you an advantage. Of course, if they aren’t embarrassed to begin with, that changes things completely.
This has happened to me, and I did reschedule. When they stood me up a second time, I did NOT reschedule. The first time I made allowance for a busy week, scatterbrained moment, whatever. The second time? This is inconsiderate, and not a client that you want.
I’ve finally created a toolkit that can help with these decisions, called How to Draw the Line Between Free and Paid.