No reply has now become one of the favorite ways for buyers to say no.
As business owners and operators, this style of saying “NO” may seem inviting for our own use. After all, we can avoid confrontation by never having to explain our decisions. However, this trend could also be packed with a trailer load of negative effects on our business! True, trust-building partnerships will not be healthy with vendors who cannot take the time to explain the "why." On the flip side, ghosting from a current customer is firm indicator that a business relationship is probably a one-way partnership in disguise? Join us as we discuss how business owners can use this shallow, and weak trend to our advantage.
Hello everybody and thank you for tuning into this episode of This Simple Biz 360 podcast. My name's Jeff Mason, I'll be your host. We're on YouTube by GTV Rumble and 28 listening platforms. And today we're gonna be talking about in this three business tips in five minutes episode, we're gonna be talking about using the new No to Our Advantage. What's the new No . Well, this is just simply a way that people, instead of potential customers and customers in some cases telling you no, they just don't answer you at all. It's a growing trend. It's ugly. It , uh, it's really one that , uh, is not in my opinion , uh, uh, anything that we want to click and , uh, drag or copy and paste into our businesses. But let's take a look at this real quick and , and you can, you know, understand where I'm coming from. So let's go back a few years. I had a situation where four of us got on a plane, went to Denver, Colorado, so we had round trip plane tickets, we had two nights in Denver. We had all these meals. Uh, this partner of ours, a current customer, a small scale customer, but could be big, they were, they said, Hey, listen, can you make a bunch of samples and get into us by this date in November? And we did all that. We spent thousands of dollars on international samples being made. We spent thousands on meals and airfare and hotels, and we delivered everything on time. And two months went by without any feedback. And I got antsy at that point in my company saying, Hey Jeff, where are we with this? I mean, you haven't got an answer yet. These guys are , are a customer of ours. So I said, look, you know what, I'm gonna go over the buyer's head and I'm gonna go , uh, to, to a senior executive. And that was a mistake on my part because it blew everything up. But you know what? I'm not unhappy that I did that. What I'm really unhappy is, is that this customer that called themselves a partner didn't even have the dignity to give us an answer. Why? So, or you know, or an the answer no. And explained to us why, and we, we kind of deserve that. We felt after all that hard work. Well, that is a growing trend. So here's what I, I want you just to kind of park on today and think about number one that really spells out one-way traffic. And in that case, we were on a one-way street where we thought we had a partner. Even though it was a shallow partnership, it's really not one that we could bake into our planning and forecasting. It was a one-way street. It was evident that if it was good for them, they'd use us. If it wasn't, you know what, they couldn't even answer us. So , uh, you know, use that in your own businesses to really , um, start to identify for yourself, you know, and, and craft number two, that forward motion that either includes or excludes customers like that. 'cause you really don't, I think you don't want these kind of customers being baked into your planning and forecasting when they can't even give you an answer as to why they say no or they give you a reason as to why they say no. They can't even, you know, can't even give us that courtesy. That's kind of an ugly thing. So, you know, it, it's really , um, from my point of view, you really have to tamp down the planning and forecasting and say, you know what? I don't think I go forward with putting these people into the numbers. And then it's an operational model. We just don't want to click and drag , copy and paste and send over to our customer base. They don't deserve this. Our paying customers deserve us to give them answers and to back up what's the, what's the huge buzzword today? Why, what's the why? They need to know why we say no or yes to things. But you know, certainly no, right? So, you know, I just, just think about this guys. It's one of those things that , um, you know, it , it , it really is an unfortunate, ugly growing trend, just getting deeper and deeper. And I really do think it stems from people not wanting to , um, face confrontation. They mistake this opportunity to manage a situation and to communicate with a customer or a vendor. And they, they look at it mistakenly as , um, you know, some confrontation that they want. Don't want that friction. We're in this feel good society and you know, that's just a byproduct of it. So any rate , uh, hopefully that helps today just to kind of think about this. It's ha if it's happening to you. Yes, it's happening all over the place. I'm embroiled in a couple of right now as we speak. So we're gonna dip back to , uh, for our lost in the shuffle to the Fillmore East and West venues altogether. We're , we're talking about about 350 concerts between 68 and 73 between the two venues. And today we're gonna start out with Fillmore East and we're gonna dip into a band that maybe considered one of the best Fillmore East concerts ever. The Allman Brothers , uh, March 12th, 1971. And we're gonna do a little tune here called Done Somebody Wrong. So we don't want to be doing anything wrong to our customers, right? The done somebody wrong, 1971, the Allman Brothers Fillmore East. We will see you in 168 hours .