Post date: Feb 4, 2014 1:26:58 AM
While working at Weyerhaeuser Technology Center in the mid-1980's we had a lot of training on running corporate departments as small businesses. One of the features was learning who our customers are and serving their needs. This training was very useful and helped our department to be very profitable. But one thing they did not teach was when to say "no" to a customer.
My first experience at running a business was with Olympic Organ Builders. When we were just getting started (after spending six months clearing out shop space and lining up suppliers) we built a 'flower box' addition to local church organ in an acoustically unfriendly room. This effort never sounded good. My lesson from that experience was to say "no" to some customer requests because the results would not satisfy either me or the customer.
My partners, Glenn White and David Dahl, were such good sales people, however, that we never really had to worry about taking a job that would not turn out well. Still, as an independent consultant - years later - I did turn down work when I felt that the effort would not yield good results.
One of these opportunities to say "no" was for a large Seattle bank that was building a trial implementation of a (then) new technology - SQL databases. I was to be the system analyst, taking the requirements written by another consultant and creating a high-level system design for the programmers. The customer group was the loan department, near the entrance to the building. I asked the hiring manager if I could ask the loan officers clarifying questions, since I wanted them (the real customers) to be satisfied with my design. I was clearly told that was not acceptable. I said "no" to that job.
In another situation I had built a billing system for our computer department. (We charged nearly everything by the hour so that our customers could give us feedback on performance.) I extended this system slightly so that it would handle the analytical laboratory and the construction shop, who then became my customers. We converted the lab from their old system and implemented a number of special improvements to our billing system at their request. But the requests never stopped, and they were usually accompanied by petty complaints.
Finally I took the laboratory's customer representative aside and said "no", we would not honor her request, and would return all their money and restore them to their original software system. I was a bit fearful of the response from either (or both) the customer representative or the analytical department manager. But without hesitation she said "Please don't put us back on the old system. We like your system." I said, "Then please stop complaining about it." While I am far from the most tactful person in the world, she became and remained an excellent customer.
While running the PC Support group we were often asked to perform tasks for which we had no experience. In these cases we would try to find a competitor who had a good reputation in that area and refer the prospective customer to them. At times the competition was the other internal PC support group (operating out of corporate headquarters rather than our home base in the technology center). At other times it was a commercial computer sales and support business.
However, since we were operating 'as if we were a small business', our prices were comparable to those of the competition, so there was no material difference to the customer. The benefit to the customer was that the work was performed well, which, in the situations where we referred customers to the competition, we could not guarantee. And we developed an excellent reputation by saying "no" to work that we could not do well.
So, sometimes it is best just to say "No".