How do you deal with losing a sale?

Sometimes it’s not your fault at all. Politics, bureaucracy, or nepotism could be the reason.

I had a hard conversation with a creative friend who was moving out of the province a few years back. He cited his reason why it was so difficult to grow a creative business here (in Saskatchewan) was because of nepotism. I had no idea what the concept of “nepotism” was. Nepotism: a popular motive in business of giving your family or friends preference over someone else, generally by giving someone a job.

Mom, what the heck is nepotism?

Giving someone a contract, job, work, or anything just because of the relationship is a poor way to make a business decision. I believe in the long run those companies create such a toxic culture that over time they dig their own grave. This is why we don’t have “one” person at StratLab that decides on new hires. This is why after three months after someone starting with us we have a vote so our people decide on who stays on the team, not one person. Having one person making all major decisions is a scary place to be.

Working with a car dealer years ago I remember asking how someone got a job in the marketing department, “oh the owner knows his Dad, that’s how he got the job.” Really? You just order someone to hire a family member of the owner? Do you think the manager of that department can treat that person the same as everyone else? It wasn’t fair at all. There was in-fighting, talking behind backs, threats of going to Uncle! That’s a horrible culture to work at within a company.

Honesty is the best strategy

If you lose an RFP because someone on the board knew someone at a competitors company let it go. You’re going to spend a lot of time asking “why”, denouncing the system, balking at how organizations make decisions. These things don’t help you get better as a person or company. Focus on bettering what you do, focus on your art, focus on the customers that love you to death! (If you don’t have customers that love you to death than you haven’t tried hard enough yet.)

If you’re getting business in an unethical way it won’t last long. It may be lucrative, it may be extremely valuable for cashflow, but at what cost to the character of your business? There are somethings that aren’t worth any amount of money in business, your reputation is one of them.