In a recent GRO (Get Results Online!) article, I talked about some of the ways in which small business owners are damaging their relationship with me - without realizing it.

Let me remind you, if you’re hoping for a positive response to your request, Rule #1 is not to p*** off the person who’s got what you want (in other words, clients or potential clients).

Now I realize the same things aren’t going to annoy everyone.  But I thought I’d share with you my top 3 pet peeves with how some other independent entrepreneurs are (not) creating relationship with me:

1) Signing me up for their newsletter without permission – Actually, this probably IS my number one pet peeve.  A colleague starts a new business or I meet someone at a workshop, and next thing I know, I’m on their mailing list.

I get far too much email to want to be on newsletter lists for which I’ve not registered.  And if I know the person at all, it puts me in the awkward position of having to unsubscribe and worry (even momentarily) about creating bad feelings.  So they’ve just irritated me twice – first, by putting me on their list unasked and second, by making me feel uncomfortable about how to get off their list.

2) Answering the phone and then saying, “Can you hold? I’m on the other line” – I suppose the theory here is that it’s nice to have the phone answered by a live person.  But I’m left with the impression that the other person they’re talking to is more important than me.  Not exactly the best mindset for wanting to hire them.  Maybe I’m a party of one here, but quite frankly, I’d rather be able to leave a message so they can call me back when they’re available.

3) Not communicating when there’s a change in time frame – I realize, as a client, that things may come up for a service provider that cause a projected (and agreed upon) timeline to change.  A death in the family, an unexpected snafu in my project, whatever, but I don’t want to be left out of the loop and wondering where they are.

I know that others may have a different ideas about punctuality.  But if we say “10 days” and two weeks later I’m still waiting to hear from them, you can bet I’m ticked off.  If they’re trying to avoid a conflict by not giving me the bad news that things have been delayed, I can assure you it makes me more upset to be in the dark than it does to hear something has changed.

So now I’m curious - what are your pet peeves as a client (or potential client)?  Leave me a comment and share. . .

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This entry was posted on Thursday, September 25th, 2008 at 1:54 pm and is filed under Marketing Planning, Client Retention. 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.