Long Term Relationships

May 11, 2007 by John Stubbs.

Mac Productions is all about ltr’s (long term relationships), whether it’s with customers, vendors or staff; building ltr’s is in our DNA. Which lead me to my point, today we had to terminate a four-year relationship with a vendor.

For several weeks I have agonized over this decision, looking for any reason to maintain our relationship, in the end I kept returning to the reason behind the break-up.

Prior to 2007, we had a solid relationship that would only get stronger in 2007.

Sometime in March of 2007, the vendor in question modified our agreement, without informing us, and allowing us to sell services they no longer offered.

We understand things change, but it was how it was done and when we were notified of these changes that put our relationship with them in jeopardy. Basically, we were NOT informed until our customer had a store full of customers wanting to purchase a service that no longer existed.

Our customer was attempting to make a sale, when sale after sale failed, so they contacted us, and we contacted the vendor. At which time we were informed, they no longer carried that service. I was understandably shocked and outraged. I asked our representative, when did this happen, and was told some time ago. Again, I responded asking if they are aware the contracts we are presenting to our customers still have the service listed. The answer was yes. Do they even care how we looked in front of our customer, or how our customer felt having to turn away thousands of dollars in sales? To that I have no answer.

In summation, we lost the customer, so we had no choice but to lose the vendor. With a little thing called “proper notification” all of this could have been prevented.

And life goes on…..

Posted in Partners | 3 Comments »