“The times are tough now
Just getting tougher
This old world is rough
It’s just getting rougher”

These days, it’s all too easy to hear the opening verse to Bruce Springsteen’s “Cover Me” and pull a muscle in your neck from nodding your head in vigorous agreement.

Times are tough, which means that agencies and contractors and consultants and such are working harder than ever to land new clients. Which means that all that time and effort spent to land a new client that winds up going elsewhere can be a big disappointment.

Or not.

I first heard from — well, for the sake of this post, I’ll call them Company X — back in April. A friend of mine knew about my online experience and thought they should talk to me: Company X has a modest Web site and they desperately need a redesign and some SEO 101 work done.

It took about two months before the initial conference call was set up. I spoke at length with the President and CEO of the company. We emailed back and forth. A designer-programmer team I know and respect got involved and provided estimates. By July I had assembled a detailed proposal and sent it over.

A month after sending over the proposal, I still hadn’t heard anything back from them. No acknowledgment of receipt. No “thanks, we’ll keep you posted.” Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Squat.

I continued to follow up without being too pushy, and in August received this message from the President and CEO: “We haven’t moved forward with anyone yet on this … still trying to determine the right price/value. Thanks for checking in.” Fair enough. That’s part of being in business: You propose, then you wait. And wait. And wait some more. And eventually, if you’re lucky, you get the gig and everything needs to be done yesterday.

But back to the timeline: In early September I receive this message from a manager in the company: “We have been doing some research and would like to speak to you.  Please call me when you have a chance.” Sounds promising. We speak. They want me to come to their New York office in September to deliver a capabilities presentation.

Nearly two months pass before I get a response from Company X regarding timing and specifics of the presentation. We set a date for early November. I circle back with my designer-programmer team, spend some significant time assembling the Powerpoint presentation and incorporating the inevitable and appropriate revisions to my original proposal called for by the passage of more than six months since we first spoke.

The presentation seems to go well enough, though I’m given the last slot of the day, they keep me waiting nearly 45 minutes before we can begin, there’s a room full of people (plus several more on the phone) they never told me would be there (despite my asking how many people would be there, since I wanted to bring the appropriate number of hard copies with me) and one person seems to be falling asleep during the time we spend together.

The meeting ends with an agreement that they would follow up immediately with additional information about a new component of the work they want done. After one week, it doesn’t arrive. It doesn’t arrive after two weeks, either. Three weeks after the meeting, they respond to yet another follow-up email with this curt and impersonal response:

“Thank you for your follow up email.  We have decided to go with another company.  We will keep you in mind if it does not work out.”

Thanks, but no thanks.

Yes, it’s always nice to bring on a new client, but the signals were there all along: Clearly Company X does not respect my time. They’re unable to respond to emails without relentless prodding to do so. When they do, there’s zero recognition of effort spent or value added. For example:

At one point, they wanted to know why Competitor Y was receiving so many inbound links when Company X and others in their industry received only a fraction of the number of links (as measured by HubSpot’s Website Grader). I researched the issue and provided a detailed answer. Never a word of thanks from Company X.

Working on a Web redesign project with Company X is clearly going to be a nightmare. I don’t know who got the gig, but I genuinely pity them. Whatever the number was at which they priced the job, they should have doubled it.

New clients are always welcome. New clients who are rude and/or disrespectful and/or arrogant and/or have a sense of entitlement are not.

Okay, there. I got it out of my system. But there really is a larger point to this rant:

Takeaway for marketers: The Golden Rule has a place in business. If you’re going through an agency or a consultant selection process, take it to heart.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 7th, 2009 at 9:12 am and is filed under Marketing Stuff, Marketing Takeaways, Rants 'n' Such, Springsteen.