Hi All:
I'm in the camp with Alloy Mcgraw and others who operate in a similar way.
I have won new customers simply because I exerted myself to be helpful even when I had to regretfully NO BID on their first job.
I have also disappointed fewer customers with promises I couldn't keep, and I have gained some very loyal customers because they know they can come to me for whatever help I can provide.
I've always seen it as the decent thing to do...sometimes they don't give a shit and reveal themselves eventually as assholes who just want to pick my brain, but these are thankfully very rare and get cut loose from my customer list.
Most appreciate it, and I have benefited from that in a thousand small ways.
So yeah, I try to help them in some way even if I'm not going to be paid in cash for it right now.
I mostly get something worthwhile sooner or later, and it is nice to be well regarded as a useful resource in my community.
Sometimes it's nothing more than a referral to someone else who has capability I don't have.
I recently sent a customer to Reliable EDM in Texas because the job was way too big to fit in my work tank so I was going to be fucking around half of forever building plugs and dams and all sorts of shit to do the job on my machine without pissing EDM oil all over the floor.
I could have gotten away with it and hosed the customer down, but for the price of air freight both ways, they could get the job done for a fraction of what I would have to charge.
I gain nothing immediate from it, but the customer may or may not remember me when they need something I CAN do for them efficiently and well.
It cost me 20 seconds of typing to generate that goodwill, and I'm completely confident the referral will not mean Reliable is now going to steal precious work from me forever.
The customer gets a lead on a possible new avenue to solve his problem, I get some goodwill and it costs me nothing...everybody benefits, which is how I like it.
So that's my take on it.
Rant Off.
Cheers
Marcus
Implant Mechanix • Design & Innovation > HOME
Vancouver Wire EDM -- Wire EDM Machining