Dan Kennedy is known to say something to the effect of “If I wake up at 2 am thinking about you or your business, you’re in trouble.”
I can relate.
For me, the “are you worth it?” measuring stick is often drama-related.
Drama happens. It’s part of life. On the other hand, if you intentionally generate drama when it isn’t necessary (is it ever?), your effectiveness/ROI aren’t what they should be.
If a vendor introduces unnecessary drama into my life, that vendor is the next one I replace.
If a contractor or staffer introduces unnecessary drama into my life than they are worth, they are the next one I replace.
You may say you’re set in your ways, crotchety, fussy or whatever – regardless of your age. All of those are excuses for things you can change about your business persona.
Keep in mind that no one searches Monster.com looking for crotchety people who are a pain to work with.
Drama isn’t picky
It doesn’t matter whether you’re the leader, the newbie, an employee, a vendor, a contractor or a temp – if you’re creating this sort of environment around you, you will either drive people away from you or you’ll provoke them to “offer you an opportunity to seek work elsewhere”.
Not being a drama queen (or king) doesn’t mean you don’t report/discuss problems or enter contentious discussions. It means that you don’t turn them into an episode of “Real Housewives of Orange County”.
If you manage the drama makers and fail to address the environment they’re creating, you could lose the best people on your team. Not only do they not want to deal with that stuff, because they are your best, they can easily find another opportunity. Think about how it would hurt to lose your key person in any one department *tomorrow*. Now think about what happens if you lose 2 or 3 of them – all because you wouldn’t take action
Real Customers of Orange County
Yes, there are customers who introduce as much drama as the “Real Housewives”.
Ultimately, you can either feed this beast, tame it or slay it.
If you feed it, you’ll repeatedly have to deal with their drama.
Every contact with this kind of customer which goes “untreated” has a cost.
- Your staff doesn’t want to deal with them, so they avoid calling them back.
- They get slower call backs than they expect, so this stirs them up even more.
- They will have less legitimacy with your staff than a typical customer, because your staff tends to be more focused on the drama rather than what’s being said.
That last one is really dangerous. These customers can be more invested in their work than is typical, which is what drives their drama. If their concerns are discounted because of their emotional baggage, you could miss something quite critical.
If you tame the customer’s drama, you’ll get better customer relationships from it. If you keep at it, you can usually change their attitude.
I’ll always remember a classic conversation my support manager (Hi Julie!) had with a frequently cranky customer. He was a nice guy, but he’d get more excited about an issue the more he talked about it. As he worked himself into more and more of a frenzy, she stopped talking about the problem they were trying to solve. In a calm, quiet voice, she asked him if he was upset with her. He said no, realized what he was doing and they resumed the conversation without drama. Without the infection drama brought to the conversation, the situation was quickly resolved.
That customer became one of our advocates, and was someone who referred his peers to us as new customers. Yet he started out as one of the dramatic types. The kind you didn’t want to call back.
That leaves the beast you must slay. Like vendors, contractors and staff, you’ll eventually encounter a customer who must be fired. The cost of dealing with them is too high. You’ll know when it’s time. The benefit of not having them around will far exceed the revenue.
Bottom line: Be the professional who doesn’t make people’s lives more complicated, dramatic or contentious. Even better, be the one who defuses those situations.