Listen to potential partners. Especially in this day and age, I will tell you I have very few potential opportunities that come into our facility that are trying to sell me. They’re coming in because they have a problem that they want us to help solve. They’re there because they have a need. You can find out pretty quickly if that customer is really there to solve a problem and they really want that problem solved by sharing what their critical issues are, what their own customers need.
You find out if you have the right partner sitting across from you by how they’re presenting their challenges.
We’re not here to tell them about us yet; we want to hear about them. By how they share that with us, you can pretty much determine somebody who truly wants to be a partner and solve our challenges together.
We’re very upfront and honest with them that we don’t think you should come in here because we want to be your supplier. We want you to come in here because we don’t know if we should be your supplier, so we’re asking you to take the time to share with us what your needs are, and we would like to take the time after that to show you what we do. If those dots connect, then it’s magic.
Justify turning work down. We make sure that our infrastructure is structured for worst-case and best-case scenario. You have to be. You have to build a flexible organization that can prepare for both.
We can pick up 20 new clients right now and not bat an eye. And we can lose 40 percent of business and still manage today. That’s the key to any business plan that you have, any infrastructure that you have. When you do that, you can say no. Even during these economic times, you can say no. If you don’t do that and you have to take care of a lot of things — you didn’t build in there that flexibility — then you will start chasing dollars. You will end up with a lose-lose situation.
How to reach: Accel Inc., (740) 549-0606 or www.accel-inc.com
