We all have dual roles in our business. While we're focused on our customers, we also are customers for other companies. We want to treat all our customers with respect - big or small, and we should treat our vendors the same way (and hope they do the same for us).
I've had the pleasure to work with Avnet as a new customer over the past couple of months. Even though they're an $11+B company, and we're a startup, they have been very helpful and responsive. We've even had 5 face to face meeting already. They've been helping us spec hardware configurations and we just ordered our first configurations to test. Their initial setup fee is $250. That's all. For this we get countless hours of consulting, component sourcing, integration and testing. Yet other companies complain about the fee.
Get real.
The best saying I've heard about this is:
We love to see all of our customers:
Some we love to see coming;
Some we love to see going.
Business is a community. Make sure everyone likes to see you coming.
I like that.
Posted by: olivier blanchard | 28 June 2006 at 08:39 PM