News May 2010
I recently signed a new customer who had spent over 12 months developing their own in house software to help sell their consultancy services.
Their background was that they were a reseller of an American solution which didn’t fully suit the European market. When the American software authors showed little appetite to make the necessary amendments they decided to recruit a developer and write it for specifically for this market.
This was the start of a rude awakening as they struggled to button down the functionality, allowed deadlines to slip, created a good looking website but with poor content and it became a horror story of incomplete projects. Throughout all this they allowed themselves to take their eye of the ball and their sales pipeline began to dry up.
At this point the MD, Geoff (not his real name) saw one of my new adverts on LinkedIn and invited me in to have a look at what they were doing and recommend how to bring some stability and focus to their business.
I was concerned about the ability to afford my services when the business was so weak and was assured they had held back funding for help and assistance and had the full support of their bank. We planned our first meeting for last Monday afternoon.
A couple days before the planned meeting I made my customary call to the Geoff to confirm our arrangements and shared a joke about the hung parliament. Everything felt good.
On Monday morning I received a call from a distraught Geoff to say that the Bank had just pulled the plug on their funding and all their hard work and personal investment was in tatters. I felt devastated for him. I really believe I could have helped him.
Geoff said “I know you could have been good for us. If only I’d found you sooner!” That hurt for three reasons,
- I had only recently started experimenting with LinkedIn advertising. If I had done so sooner I might now have a happy customer;
- Geoff has allowed himself to get too deep into the problem and had no release valve of a colleague, friend or trusted advisor to turn to. If he did have someone, he’d not have been in the mess he was in; and most importantly
- The bank who pulled the plug was RBS majority owned by the Tax payer and still paying big bonuses to the bankers who destroyed Geoff’s business.
I was left feeling frustrated for people like Geoff who leave it too late to turn for professional advice and guidance. He’d never developed a software package before nor had his developer. He wouldn’t have built a house without an architect yet took a chance on writing a software package without expert guidance. I know I lost a customer but Geoff ended up losing his company! A true tragedy yet avoidable!
ENDS
