Last night I visited the Face to Face group hosted by Hannah Krueger (180 Headhunters) to show the attendees how to write their 30-second elevator speeches/commercials. It was a lot of fun and the results were awesome. The formula works! It’s easy. It’s fun.

This morning I dropped into another networking group by invitation of Rhonda Wilson (of Big John’s Oil and Lube) and met some new people. One of them wants me to offer a one-hour presentation in October or November at her Umpqua Bank location in Spanaway. She’s going to invite business owners who want to learn more about thirty-second intros, bios and About Us pages. I look forward to doing that for her.

Last night I also parted company with a business owner whose creative accounting and billing appear to be designed to get other business owners’ premier services at zero cost in exchange for his inflated-price services.

I had heard more than one disquieting story about this fellow, one of which I received the exact details about from a friend of the aggrieved party. So I sent him what I had learned and asked him to explain his side of it.  In a brief, several-sentence response, he summarily told me to mind my own business, that I “clearly” didn’t know what I was talking about (far from true, since I verified the details with the actual aggrieved party and made inquiries of six other professionals in his industry to make sure that what he had charged was exorbitant for the time it should have taken him to do it) and asked me to de-friend him. He also said he wouldn’t refer clients to me anymore.

I’m okay with that. I figure that most customers believe “birds of a feather flock together” and I don’t want anyone thinking that my integrity in any way matches his lack thereof.

I was appalled by his terse, immature response. I’m glad to have uncovered this side of him, because if that’s the best I can expect from an inquiry asking him to explain why he billed these folks the way he did, I certainly don’t need him in my referral network.  It was the most ungentlemanly, unbusinesslike response I have ever received from a business owner.

Another great aspect of networking is finding out how other business owners operate and, as a result, which ones to avoid.  It took me quite a while to find out about this fellow, as I gave him the benefit of the doubt for the longest time despite the stories that were stacking up against him. But his response to my inquiry about his latest tactics just confirmed to me that I don’t want to be doing business with him or referring business to him if this is the kind of treatment that my referred clients can expect to receive.

As a result of this expulsion from his  kingdom, I’m sure I’ll go from “best copywriter in Tacoma” (his earlier blessing) to “copywriter non grata” should any of his clients ask about me, but that’s just sour grapes because I asked him to explain himself or redeem himself by making amends and he wouldn’t–or perhaps he couldn’t without looking like the lowest kind of critter in either case.

It’s always easier to blow off an inquiry and try to send the inquirer sprawling than it is to express regret and try to patch things up with the aggrieved party. Happens all the time.

But when I see other professionals doing it, my next move is away from them. If they can’t treat their customers and associates with respect, they come out of my Rolodex.

This reminds me. I may have mentioned it in an earlier blog post. Three months ago I overheard two men in a networking room agree that “whenever I trade or barter, I always inflate my prices. Everybody does.”

Everybody does? Really?  Really?! That’s a gross generalization. I don’t–and I know a lot of other people who don’t, too. I’m light years more likely to give a price break (and I have, scores of time) than I would ever be to gouge a customer (which I have never done, and never will).

The two fellows who shared this appalling exchange hadn’t made it to my “know, like and trust” list at that point, and as a result of that comment, they never did. I will never refer anyone to them–barter, trade or cash.