Inside Small Business | Small Business & Home Business Marketing

The Tyranny of the Urgent

Wow! I just got a reminder today about what should be important about running a small business. Making our clients happy!

Instead - I got a lesson in marketplace competition (where I was on the losing end).

Here’s the situation: I had a client that had an open job posting for a project manager. I had the PERFECT candidate. I forwarded the resume in via the regular channels, and then I tried to set up a meeting with my client to discuss the opportunity, my perfect candidate, and the value proposition my client would receive from having a resource with skills from my company (vs. anyone else’s company).

Then - my client postponed due to a conflicting meeting. Then I couldn’t meet, we traded a few emails trying to arrange schedules, but I never got to give any of those valuable marketing messages to my client.

We finally managed to set up a meeting for next week, and I was all ready to give my wonderful marketing messages.

Then - I got an email from the client’s Human Resources director (who manages the hiring). They sent out a generic email stating that the company had just filled the position - and thanked us for sending in resumes. I got shut out.

So - I think it’s a great lesson in letting the day-to-day urgent tasks get in the way of the important tasks - like building relationships, and performing long term planning.

Make sure you’re not caught up in the day to day so much that you don’t do the things you need to grow.

Posted on Monday, May 19th, 2008 at 11:03 am and is filed under ProCore Resources. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.