I was talking with a fellow laborer in the creative services field the other day who was lamenting the “loss” of a project. It seems that he had a long-standing relationship with a client that who had recently hired a self-described marketing expert. Apparently this newly hired marketing guru – let’s call him Bluster, came with a mandate to bring “fresh ideas.” One of Bluster’s fresh ideas was that he could get the same services that my friend had been satisfactorily supplying for much less money.

Whoa! Bluster saves money and therefore justifies his fees. Well, maybe. It turns out that the lower-cost services the Bluster was promoting weren’t exactly equivalent to those my friend had been providing. In fact, they weren’t even in the same league. But…they were cheaper.

Of course, you can always get almost anything cheaper, especially if the difference between the costlier thing and the cheaper thing is insignificant to you, which gets to the point of my friend’s plaint. When he pointed out to the client who had hired Bluster that Bluster’s cheaper alternative provided services that were significantly inferior to those he provided, the client agreed! What dismayed my friend was that the client didn’t care.

Yes Sir, yet another case where cheap triumphs over good. But, since I wrote about that last time, my point this time is slightly different. I think my friend’s client – though he had bought my friend’s services for years – wasn’t truly a client. How can that be? I maintain that he wasn’t my friend’s client because he didn’t really value the quality of the service my friend was providing. Sooner or later he would have been gone.

My friend’s relationship with his now ex-client was based on something other than a true appreciation of my friend’s abilities, knowledge and professional acumen. Perhaps it was friendship, or merely that the client didn’t feel like looking elsewhere until Bluster heaved in the door. Whatever the relationship was based on it wasn’t rooted on the client’s need for and appreciation of my friend’s value.

Put another way: you can’t lose what you don’t really have.

For a lot of businesses – particularly those engaged in full-tilt warfare with their competitor (real and perceived) – the idea that there are people or businesses that aren’t suited to be their customers is rank heresy. A number of years ago I did some work for a company that was frantic to grow and felt that they weren’t getting their fair share of clients. Yet, when I did some customer research I discovered that they had a fantastic success rate with new business and virtually all of their proposals resulted in new clients. Of course some prospects took longer than others to sign up due to fiscal budgets and such. Interestingly, the company I was working for saw these prospects as new business “failures.” After I completed the research I came back to the company and reported that they probably had their “market share” and then some. They didn’t want to hear it.

The truth is that no product, or business, is ideal for everyone. I think this is a good thing because it means that there is always an opportunity for someone to start a new business or enterprise in almost any category of endeavor. For reasons to numerous to mention, there are plenty of folks who are on the lookout for something that better suits their needs. After all this America – a country that was founded on the idea that something better is just over the horizon. The flip side is that you have to be savvy enough to know when you’ve found it.

This last point requires a quality that seems to be increasingly rare these days: appreciating and being satisfied with what you have. That’s why a business model based mainly on growth is doomed to fail. Soon or later you’re going to run out of customers. Personally, I think it’s better to great than huge. I also think it’s impossible to be both. There is only so much talent to go around, and only so much time that the “talent” has to devote to solving a problem or serving a client.

The 19^th and early 20^th Centuries saw mass production beat out “hand-crafted.” Yes, mass production meant that more people could enjoy goods that were previously limited to a few, but the goods weren’t equivalent. One consequence was that connoisseurs rose up to defend and hopefully preserve genuine quality.

Back to my friend’s plight. His once-upon-a-time client wasn’t a connoisseur. In the end, what he truly valued was price, not quality. Maybe when the consequences of Bluster’s misguided recommendations come home to roost, my friend will get his client back. I doubt it. Better that my friend seek out people with a true appreciation of all that he has to offer because those who genuinely value his quality will be much less likely to wooed away by a cheap imitation.