Ploys in Business…

You know what I hate? I hate it when we get hired for a job, do a great job for the client and then they find every excuse in the book not to pay the rest of their fee. It’s unbelievable!

This happens time and time again and it never ceases to amaze me that people can be so dishonest and untrustworthy.

It particularly happens when we do small projects for clients. It’s never a huge amount of money but it becomes the principle of the matter.

We took on a job to promote an event.  We were giving nearly two weeks to promote it and told the producers that we could not guarantee attendance.  All we could guarantee is that they would get significant exposure via social media.

Their event was listed in every online calendar. Ellen Heydt and I promoted the event quite a few times a day on our social networking sites.  I even reached out to my friends via email to get people to respond.

More than 10 people contacted me and told me that they would be attending the event. I got incredible response on the social networking sites and even promoted it to various business groups.

At the end of the project, I got an email from the client telling me that they were disappointed that only two people registered via our link.  I was shocked to say the least but I had no way of knowing if this was true.

I asked the producers to supply me with stats on the event and the click rates.  At first they were reluctant but then they gave me reports which were not relevant.  I finally got a report that indicated that as a result of our efforts, more than 750 people clicked on their link.  That’s a lot of people for just two weeks of work.

I explained to them that our job is to get awareness and visibility. They need to get good speakers that draw.  They need to price the event right.  And they need to make it easy for everyone to register.

They decided to blame us for the failure of their event.  And that hurt me.  It hurt me because we worked very hard on promoting the event and we did a great job.  More than 750 people clicked on their link.  Isn’t that worth something?

And as a result of our efforts, many organizations have teamed up with them.  Again, isn’t there value there?

So I guess what I’m complaining about is that these types of clients try to use every excuse in the book to get out of paying the tab.

I have great clients who always pay on time but those who drag it out and then make up stuff to get out of paying, well that’s just not good business.

Love to hear your experiences…