NEVER Suck Up To a Customer

My BNET blogging colleague Stanley Bing recently received an inquiry from ad agency employee about the smarmy behavior of his coworkers. In response, Bing trotted out a variation of the "customer is always right" canard and then suggested that the guy was stupid for not truckling. That's not just bad advice, it's positively toxic.

Here's the original question:

I work in an advertising agency. I don't belong because I can't figure out this one seemingly important thing: How do you give up your common sense and blindly do whatever the client tells you? I don't want to do that, but everybody around me is quite adept at it. What are the secrets?

First, you love the customer, no matter how smelly, stupid, or demented he, she, or they might be. They are your customer. You venerate them. You know that without them, there would be nothing left of you. You dream of new ways to please him, her, or them.
Second, when there is a problem with your customer, you are not filled with resentment. You wrack your brains day and night to think of new ways to solve the problem. Finally, you search within yourself constantly to find pockets of anger, condescension, and negativity toward your beloved client. You root them out and replace them with respect and affection.

Letting a customer treat you like garbage is the best way to screw up your career and screw up your company. No self-respecting sales professional should be forced to cater to a customer who is "smelly, stupid or demented." And no company that's worth working for would force them to do so.

Any firm, or sales rep, that truckles to a "demented" customer gets what it deserves -- endless problems, missed payments, and probably a lawsuit to boot. Lie down with a skunk, and you end up stinking.

The relationship between a sales professional and a customer is a relationship of equals. Let me repeat that - a relationship of equals. The sales professional, in today's B2B world, is creating a solution can have a substantial impact on the customer's revenue and profit. Kowtowing in neither necessary nor appropriate.

If you're a quality professional working for a quality firm, you should not just expect quality behavior from your customers -- you should, and must, DEMAND it. If you keep selling to a customer that's doing stupid or counter-productive things with your product, then you're just a con-man. Plain and simple.

Here's a little saying that you might want to post somewhere in your office where you can see it every day:

FIRST RATE COMPANIES DON'T DO BUSINESS
WITH THIRD RATE CUSTOMERS.
First rate sales professionals know that it's their responsibility and duty to tell a customer -- diplomatically, of course -- when he or she is doing something foolish. And they never, never, never truckle. Never.

Customers worth having know when they're being patronized. Good customers can sense insincerity a mile away. If they know you're handing them a line, they'll give you the bum's rush so fast your head will spin.

What's truly pernicious about Bing's response is that he treats the ad agency's dysfunctional behavior (i.e. "give up your common sense and blindly do whatever the client tells you") as if it were not just normal, but even admirable.

I can just imagine the kind of crap that that agency must produce if they have to kiss major customer butt to get the business. Probably the kind of corporate-goodness, brand-building, "our-CEO-is-so-darn-cute" horse manure that never helped any sales rep EVER close a deal.

Look, I almost always agree with Bing's advice. He's a wicked smart guy and one of my favorite authors, but in this case, Bing got it so wrong that I'm hoping to discover he was just playing some kind of elaborate joke.

Does he really want to propagate the old-timey, obsolete fawning behavior that makes people hate and distrust sales pros?

For cryin' out loud, the profession has suffered for decades from the perception that sales pros are manipulative creeps. We're finally -- finally -- pulling away from that stupid archetype and the unctuous behaviors that spawned it... and here's an advice column actually recommending those behaviors as sound business practice.

I can't help but wonder whether Bing would continue to write for an editor (i.e. a customer) who is "smelly, stupid or demented". I'm willing to bet that he'd tolerate demented behavior from an editor for a short New York second... and then find somebody else to write for.

READERS: You can probably sense that I'm incredibly ticked off, so I need you guys to give me a reality check. Here's a poll: