There was this company I usually had business transactions with, somewhere in the south eastern parts of Nigeria.
The CEO Mr. Brutus [not his real name] had employed one of his relatives or clansmen Mr.Ketilo [not his real name] to a sensitive position as The Chief Financial Officer [CFO] in this company.
The CEO trusted Mr.Kelito to do a good job and take care of his business.He gave him room to interface with the customer care department in handling customers’ orders and processing same.
Whenever I placed orders to this company for the supply of goods …Mr.Kelito would chose to favour his kit and kin over me. This continued for a while and I got curious and asked other customers if they were getting the same kind of treatment I was receiving from The CFO.
Surprisingly, a whole lot of customers had one sad story/experience to share with me about their unfair treatment in the hands of Mr.Kilito .
We complained to the CEO…he found our complaints not worthy of his attention as he trusted his CFO to ‘do a good job’ with customers’ complaints.
I took my business to another vendor.It wasn’t long before other aggrieved customers left the company too.
The company’s sales declined ,orders now trickled in unlike before…the CEO queried the sales department and the feedback he got was a shocking revelation of how Mr.Kilito [his chosen CFO] has been rendering biased and skewed service to the company’s customers…hence the mass exodus of their customers.The company lost a great deal of market share to itscompetitors…because of one man’s sheer arrogance and selfishness and the CEOs inability to take feedback seriously.
I got a call from this company early this year…a voiced introduced himself as the new CFO…he informed that Mr.Kilito has been fired that he was his replacement.
I wasn’t surprised.
If you run a small business or any business at all,DO NOT be sentimental in assigning sensitive positions to your friends,relatives or ‘anointed’ staff…sacrificing competence on the altars of emotional attachments or sentiments whicg will end up hurting your business.
To avoid all this mistake…here’s what you’ve to do:
- hire only competent people into sensitive positions
- let your business be guided by systems and processes [this way whoever you employ has a business process and a system guide him/her in the discharge of their duties]
- train your employees on the job roles for which you are hiring them.
- reprimand any erring employee and change the incompetent ones who refuse to change or adapt to their job responsibilities.
I have put together a checklist of small business marketing mistakes to guide you through landmines in your entrepreneurial journey…If you don’t want poor random activities, to neglect customers’ feedback, be ignorant of market intelligence …running your business…Then get access to the Small business Marketing MistakesPDf …use the information therein to stay clear of ‘tripwires’ that can ruin your business.
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