How to Recover from a Business Trip Gone Wrong<\/a>\u201d \u2013 caught my eye. It can be particularly devastating to your small business to lose a potentially significant customer or client or a current one because travel gone awry keeps you from getting to a meeting on time or at all.<\/p>\nAs the article points out the latter is exactly what happened to Daniel Feiman, managing director of a global management and consulting firm in Southern California. He lost his biggest client and a missed speaking opportunity worth $5000 when he got stuck in an airport for over 24 hours. (From what I gather, Feiman was speaking at a conference his client organized.)<\/p>\n
Steps to deal with business trip disaster <\/strong><\/p>\nHere\u2019s what Feiman advises from the experience:<\/p>\n
Damage control<\/strong>: Even if the missed meeting is no fault of your own, make sure you let your customer know you are willing to do whatever it takes to make things right. For example, you might offer to do some additional work and not charge, other than out of pocket costs.<\/p>\nBackup plan: <\/strong> If a meeting is imperative for your client relationship or a potential one, consider what you could do if some reason, you were to miss it.\u00a0 As I mentioned above, today\u2019s desktop and mobile devices used with cloud-based video conferencing could save the day.\u00a0 If presenting a plan or proposal is the purpose of getting together, you also could conduct a web conference whereby everyone could go through the presentation with you.<\/p>\nIt might be advisable to leave more than one day in advance to get somewhere,\u00a0 using the extra day to schedule additional appointments in the area.\u00a0 Or consider sending another team member ahead if you can\u2019t leave early. Every situation is going to be different and will require a different game plan.<\/p>\n
Rebuild<\/strong>: Sometimes you just can\u2019t fix a situation and have to accept that the customer is going to move on. At that point, you\u2019ll need to redouble your marketing efforts to rebuild the lost business.<\/p>\nTechnology is changing the way we get together so depending on planes, trains and automobiles may not be as important as it used to be. But if you need to be on hand, don\u2019t leave anything to chance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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