Failure can be a greater teacher than success

This is a quick trip down memory lane, but eventually it will morph into a blog post about business.

When I was a sophomore baseball player, I was battling a friend for a starting position at shortstop. The coach kept bouncing back and forth between us. Finally, one day I made a snarky comment in front of the team about who should be starting. The coach had had enough. He flung the bag of bats he was carrying and loudly gave me an attitude adjustment.

Needless to say, I didn’t play again that year. I also knew I’d gone too far and didn’t quit. I accepted my fate and came to every practice and game.

A few years later, I needed to raise some money for college expenses, and I remembered that old coach was an avid baseball card collector. I had a bunch of really good ones from the 1960s – back before the baseball card market collapsed. I gave him a call. He came over, we caught up and worked a fair deal. I now see him several times a year at sporting events and we’re good friends.

What does this have to do with business? Business relationships are similar to personal relationships.

Recently, Thinker was asked to build a new website for a company. When we launched, we notified the old vendor of the switch. Typically, when website vendors change, it is a courtesy to allow the new vendor access to the website analytics to see if the changes you made are actually working. In this case, instead of just transferring access to the data, the old vendor went through the time-consuming process of deleting the analytics. Despite previous requests to gain access from both us and our client, those numbers were gone. When the previous vendor shot back with a snarky remark about not having to give it over if the client wasn’t working with them anymore the whole discussion turned into legal threats.

Business is more competitive than a personal life. When you gain a client, it many cases it’s because they are dissatisfied with the work of another company. If you stay in business long enough, you are going to lose clients or customers as well. It may seem strange to say, but how you handle that situation can help you grow your business.

Kissmetrics is an excellent business blog. They covered this topic in a way in a post “5 Ways to Turn Your Unhappy Customer into a Valuable Resource.”

1. Make Your Customer Feel Heard – obviously, some need of your customer’s went unmet. Politely ask why they are making a change and if you get an answer don’t get defensive. Instead, indicate that you understand their frustration and that you will figure how to fix that for future customers. You may not win the business back, but it’s unlikely your former customer will actively campaign against you.
2. Do All That You Can to Delight Your Unhappy Customer – this changes a bit once you’ve actually lost the customer. Fighting someone over website data – it’s their website not yours – does not delight a former customer. You want the last interaction to be as positive as possible.
3. Damage Control – Protect Your Brand from Negative Mentions – in today’s multimedia environment, one negative review has much more power than dozens of positive reviews. Even in businesses that don’t rely on Facebook for sales, business owners have large email lists. It’s very easy to fire off an angry email to a few dozen business owners.
4. Build a Positive Reputation – if you handle a lost client the right way, the opportunity is there to do business again or to get other business. You won the business in the first place. Your customer saw something in you. If you handle the end of the relationship professionally, chances are your former customer will recommend you to others. You never know when you’ll need to sell some baseball cards.
5. Seize the Opportunity for Improvement – no one is more honest with you than someone who is firing you. Listen and learn. Perhaps their expectations were too high. You allowed that to happen. Did something happen in the work chain that was out of your control? This is a chance to figure how to bring it within your control. Failure is a greater teacher than success.