| | Networking Tips | | | | Parting Words | | | | By Harvey Mackay | | | | | | Losing a client can feel as devastating as receiving the words, “You’re fired.” Your top customers keep your business afloat, and it’s painful to part ways. Harvey Mackay, in his latest book, Use Your Head to Get Your Foot in the Door, offers advice about how to be tactful at the end of a relationship—because someday that client may need your services again. Here Mackay offers BNI readers an exclusive excerpt from his book. | | | When people are fired, many look at their last words as a chance to ventilate all the venom and frustration that may be within them. It's their final chance to retaliate before clearing out one's desk – the career equivalent of a trip to the firing squad.
Be very careful about that attitude. It can be costly and dangerously terminal for your career. | | |  | The best way to part company with your present employer is almost always on as good a set of terms as reality allows. The situation is strikingly similar to losing a customer when you are in sales. In sales, you have to understand that how you exit an account is just as critical as how you enter into a relationship. |
| | | | Regaining the good will of former employers can be as important as pursuing a new one. It may seem refreshing to dive into a new pool of contacts today. But don't forget this: From an efficiency standpoint, you already have an established relationship on which to build. It's simply one that has, for some reason, gone awry. That means how you end an association is fundamental to the possibility of beginning a new one. Secondly, the person to whom you choose to rage may well be answering a recruiter's call in a reference check . . . or even working for an entirely new employer months from now. |
|
| | | | | | Chapter Meetings |  | Every Friday from 6.45am to 8.30am |
| | | Why not Join In? | | | | Phone Frank on (01) 460 4556 |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
| | | | When you lose a job, consider the first thing we say to a lost customer at MackayMitchell Envelope Company: "Thank you for giving us your business all these years." And we say it with sincerity and mean it. The next is: "What can we do to make it an easy transition for you?" And finally: "If things don't work out, we're ready, willing and able to consider stepping right back in. We sure would love to keep in touch with you from time to time." And we do.
|
| | | Let's say the job you are losing is one you dearly wanted to keep or an affiliation with an organization you deeply loved. Surely look at all your options. But from the moment you lose that spot, start to visualize the day you will win them back. Imagine the lunch or the golf game you will enjoy together to celebrate your return. Then plan out each painstaking, detailed, and hard-to-swallow step you would need to take to reinstate yourself. Don't make it an obsession, but do make it an option.
| | | | Mackay's Moral: He or she who burns bridges better be a damn good swimmer! |
|
| | | We welcome all visitors! | | | We meet every Friday morning from 6.45 to 8.30am in Bewleys Hotel, at Leopardstown,
Why not visit us in the Castle Chapter at one of our regular weekly meetings? | | | | | | | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
