288: The Piranha Client

THE Sales Japan Series by Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan

If you have ever watched one of those nature documentaries about the piranha fish, they can strip an animal of its flesh in seconds. The way they do that though is totally different to a shark. Growing up in Australia, we are all experts on sharks and we know that they can distend their lower jaw to make the size of the bite larger. They will take huge chunks of flesh off your body at a time. The piranha however only takes small bites but there are a tremendous lot of them and this is where the trouble comes from. These small bites remind me of some clients and how they attempt to strip you of your deal content, one little bite sized piece at a time.

We are dealing with a large company and a new division. This is a group we haven’t worked with before, so the people are new to us. We struck a deal for a reasonable piece of business and imagined we would set some dates and get busy with the delivery. Gradually, they came back with a little larger piece of business and wanted discounts for volume, which we agreed to. And then they came back with another tranche and wanted more discounts. And then another tranche and a request for more discounts. “Hmm, I am being played here”, was the thought going through my mind. I was in a bind now because being unable to see the total deal size from the beginning, I had nicely backed myself into the corner labelled “Big Discounts” and had no wiggle room.

Did they plan that approach from the outset or did they get into a feeding frenzy on the discounts and think “let’s see how far we can push this along?”. I am not sure which is which, but I do know we are working for a substantial reduction in revenues as a result. In retrospect, I should have entertained the possibility that they would want further discounts and should have arranged my numbers, so that there was a hard stop which came into play much earlier. In fact, they actually came back with a slightly different requirement and I was determined that if we had more of this scope creep, I would pull the shutters down earlier on the discount front this time.

They were also taking bites on another front. There are always issues around personnel resource availability and certifications in the training business. Dale Carnegie is very strict regarding trainer development and it basically takes 18 months to get the first level of trainer certification. After that, for every other core course you want to get certified in, you have to add a week of specialist training and pass the accreditation, which isn’t a forgone conclusion by any stakes. The next level of piranha activity surfaced around trainer selection.

We recognize that trainer quality is everything for a training company, which is why we spend so much time and treasure getting people certified and put them through hell to get accredited. If you don’t believe me, come on over and give it a try! There is always the question of the alignment between how many people are qualified to teach a certain piece of content and how many are actually able to meet the timetable requirements of the client.

This is a tricky balance at the best of times and made even more difficult because of Covid. We have external and internal trainers and in normal times, we have good availability, but thanks to Covid destroying the training industry, a number of those external trainers are no longer available. If they cannot get regular work doing training then they gravitate more towards things like consulting and they have limited windows to do training. The upshot is when we are getting more piranha bites about wanting to see more and more trainer profiles and more and more demands about selections, we have to push back.

Are we prepared to walk away from the whole deal, especially during a devastating pandemic, if the client proves to be a pain? Many service industry companies have a “no idiots” policy regarding who they will work for. Actually they use a much stronger word than idiots, but I think you get the picture. Scope creep, discount pressure, difficult to deal with individuals are a toxic cocktail. Where do you draw the line for your business? How much is too much, when trying to satisfy clients?