#Startup Say No to a Customer Proudly

This is the story of yore. There are times when you hit a low while starting up or even in a mid-growth crisis - those days you would want to delete from your calendar.  Sometimes, your calendar looks like a blackhole - depressing.  

One of those days, I had asked a prospect to pay an advance - I normally take advance for work, but this was a crisis that I was bent on avoiding.  The compensation was to be against a new project, and he was all fine.  It was an honorable deal, and the customer seemed to understand. 

It cuts both ways - Customers have to be sensitive to startups' payouts

The following day and the next, the payment never came.  The prospect did not pick the call or return my messages - those were days of my crisis - as that was only way out I could think of to crossing the bridge without borrowing.  My anxiety grew and I tried reach him, I would admit, rather a little nervously. 

The customer finally responded after two days - by the time, I had found my way out somehow;  he said I was chasing unnecessarily and he had been 'busy', and I was overreacting.  I told him that my crisis had blown up, and I had been smithereens; and I sought help, and not alms.  The last thing I wanted was to be judged - as the advance was requested to help me blow over a crisis.  The customer said lets do business.  I refused.  

I wrote an email regretting the inability to proceed, and withdrawing the request for advance.  After all, my terms of the deal was a help at the time I needed.  And for me, this was a failure of commitment - and I said 'no' to the customer proudly. Somehow the cloud passed on.

Has your customer breached a commitment?  How have you handled it?  Would be interesting to know. 

- Ashok Subramanian

(C) Cherunathury Tech  Ventures 2015