How Friendships Cost You More Than Money
Customers aren’t your friends.
Even if you do business with your friends, there still has to be a layer built on something more beneficial to everybody other than the friendship.
And this comes from someone who decided to go into business with his best friend–which presents challenges in its own right.
The other day, I had a “friend” come out to take a look at a sprinkler system for a customer.
It took them 10 minutes to spot the problem and offer a solution. Now this friend normally charges a decent fee to come out and look at properties–but for me, he would slice his price in half since we’re friends.
This happens to me more than you can imagine with other business owners that I call to help out with a customer. But I always insist that they charge me whatever their price is.
(I’ll get to why that is in a second)
Another story:
Last year, when we hired a marketing agency for our lawn business, they said they cut us a deal.
Not that we asked them to do so, but they stated this after we complained to them about the level of service we were receiving. As if this deal they cut is supposed to make the crappy treatment of our company OK.
