Everyone knows how powerful word of mouth advertising is right?  I don’t understand how some companies treat their potential suppliers unlike they treat their customers.  Do they not realize that we are potential customers and not only potential suppliers.  Every time I deal with a potential supplier I do everything in my power to respond to them, be polite and I respect their efforts and their company.  The reason I do this is I find it very disrespectful when potential clients do this to me.  It seems silly as it takes a second to reply to an email and let me know that you have chosen another supplier.  Recently I have been trying to follow up with a prominent client in the city.  With no word back, I have a negative feeling about this company and do not feel positive about their brand and I am likely not to refer them to others.

Recently I was following up with a client and this is what he sent back to me, this is how you should treat your potential suppliers:

Hi John,

 I hope you had a most enjoyable Christmas season, and that 2010 is off to a good start.

 Thanks for a very comprehensive quote.  Our project team was not able to agree to commit this level of funding however, and elected to go with another bid.  That being said though, we’ve decided that for any of our own future clients who may be interested in a higher-end design & development proposal, yours is one of two local firms from whom we will request it.  This is based on the results of our own experience here, and our favourable impression of how you do business.

 Thanks, and all the best to you!

What a professional response and I bet this did not take 5 minutes to write.  This tells me something about how they treat their customers, if they treat their potential suppliers this good, their customers must be treated like gold.

Once again, thanks for listening

This entry was posted by John McDonald on Monday, January 4th, 2010 at 11:16 pm and is filed under Business, Sales and Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.