You can say a lot of things to me before you offend me, but if you ever dare accuse me of being unethical . . . well . . . them’s be fightin’ words.
I am proud of my ethics and I am glad I found a business partner who is on the same page as I am when it comes to doing what feels right and allows us to sleep nice and soundly at night.
I got a call today from a business owner who was looking for help with his website, but since he’s in direct competition with one of our existing clients, I had to turn him down.
This isn’t the first time this has happened to us. It actually happened to us a week ago, too.
This is one of the dangers with niching your business—a topic we covered in a prior blog post. You become so well known for the specialty service you provide that clients start crawling out of the woodwork, but you can’t help them all. Especially when you have a business like ours where we help businesses grow.
Providing the exact same services to direct competitors just wouldn’t be right in our books. It’s not like we sell jewelry or give oil changes. We help businesses attract more customers. If we help two mortgage brokers attract more customers in the same demographic, it just wouldn’t be right.
Anyway, these two instances lately where we found ourselves turning down two perfectly good customers out of loyalty to two of our existing customers got us thinking.
Do other businesses like ours operate this way?
If you offered social media marketing services to one muffler shop in PEI, would you offer them to another?
If you develop print ads for one real estate brokerage in Charlottetown, would you develop them for another?
What do you think? Does our high set of ethical standards make you respect us more? Or do you think we’re idiots for turning down business?
Photo credit: Justin Bland
About jaime
For a business that prides itself on being at the forefront of technology and the use of social media, you seem very old-fashioned. Ethics and values? But, hey, you’re not selling ad space. You’re creating messages and building images. If you were to portray two competing clients as both being the best in their field, then you’d be just another couple of opportunists in an industry that’s filled with them. Your approach is refreshing, and the world needs more idiots like you.
I love that you just called us idiots.
I don’t think I’ve ever used that word as part of a compliment before.
It is a bit tricky to pull that off. You did it beautifully, though.
I respect it! Some people in business seem to operate under the assumption that the nice guys finish last but I don’t agree. Your clients will trust you and won’t hesitate to sing your praises.
Thanks for reading our blog Carly and for supporting our “do business with heart” attitude!
Since there are no hard and fast rules about the number or types of clients that any business can have, then this is purely a matter of choice. As you said, for you it’s a matter of ethics. I can understand that you don’t want to deal with sticky situations that might arise due to a conflict of interest. I admire you for this and I think that the businesses that you deal with are thankful for this too.
Thanks for chiming in, Judith!