I will never refuse more guests at a lunch. A few years back I had a lunch set up with the CEO of a large food processing company. He asked if he could bring a handful of his team members with him, he brought 4 additional teams members with him from his IT Department.
We were lucky enough to gain the CEO’s company as a client, which is/was a dream client. But that is where this story changes. Over the years two of the members from the lunch left to head up IT Departments at new companies. When they landed at their new companies they asked us to come in to manage their cell phone programs. One left for a manufacturing company, the other left for another food processing company. After a year one of the new points of contact at the food processing company left to head up the IT Department at a large construction company and he brought us to his new company. One lunch four new clients.
Gaining new clients is paramount in any business. How you carry yourself and treat them is even more important. We did provide a value to each of our contacts along the way, over $110,000 a year in savings. Our value extended beyond the dollar value and their confidence in us made them want to add us to the new team they were building at their new company.
People change jobs all of the time, if you do your job right and treat them as important as when you were trying to gain their business throughout the relationship they will take you with them when they build their new team.