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When I was a kid I used to be captivated by the Wild West shootouts on Gunsmoke. For those of you under 40, Gunsmoke was a TV western. For those of you under 30 a western was a TV show about cowboys. Suddenly I’m starting to feel a little old. At any rate, these shootouts normally had one man standing at one end of the street facing another at the other end. They could not come to an agreement over their differences so they felt it best to draw their guns and shoot at one another; normally one of them died and the other was the victor. Occasionally both would die; more on that later.

When we have differences with our good customers we are often tempted to have a “shootout” with them. For example, let’s say you are having a disagreement with a customer about exactly when you said an item was to be delivered. You’re infuriated because you know you’re right and you’re going to show them they are wrong because you have the written documentation to prove it. Sure enough, you do your research and there it is, in black and white, with their signature. They are wrong and you are right!

But wait a second. Here is the important difference between the shootouts on Gunsmoke and a shootout with a valued customer. In the Wild West the victor didn’t care that his opponent was dead; in fact he was probably happy about it. You, on the other hand, have a different situation because dead customers don’t buy any longer, and you do care about that. You may have proven that you were right, but in the process you killed a high value customer. They will never buy from your company again and will happily tell anyone that will listen how bad your company is. Many customers have been “killed” in these kinds of shootouts. The overwhelming desire to be “right” is sometimes just that, overwhelming, even when it costs you commission.

Just like shootouts in the Wild West, sometimes both the customer and the salesperson are killed. We’ve all seen hot headed salespeople who strong-arm their customers at every turn, always needing to be right. Guess what happens to their sales careers? Short lived. They die along with their customers.

Even though a good customer might be wrong about something, resist the temptation to position the disagreement as a win-lose confrontation. No one likes to be backed into a corner and shown that they are wrong. Handle these situations with grace and keep that valued customer alive to buy another day.

Tags: service

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