Nothing But the Truth

I took my two sons on a bus trip for their first ever visit to Yankee Stadium over the weekend. It was a great game and great visit to a great ballpark. Unfortunately, the bus ride home wasn't so great. When the bus blew its engine on Rt. 95 in Connecticut and we were deposited unceremoniously at an abandoned train station to wait for another bus, we knew we were in for a long night. But how long was it going to be before we were rescued by another bus? We heard the trip organizer tell people the wait would be 15 minutes, an hour, any minute now, and so on. In truth, it was was going to be 4 hours before he could get another bus to take us back to Rhode Island. Had we known the truth up front, many of us could have explored other options - we had friends in the area, there was a train station nearby, or I could have asked my wife to pick us up and we still would have arrived home hours before the bus ultimately did. As a result, I and the 45 other people on the trip will never do business with this organizer again nor will the hundreds of other people who hear this story from us in the coming weeks. The moral of the story is that the organizer should have simply told us the truth up front - it wasn't his fault that the bus broke down unexpectedly and we would have been somewhat sympathic to his plight.

I tell this story because it is similar to a recent discussion I had with two media representatives. I was looking for options to promote a client on an online product portal and spoke with the sales representatives of two leading Web sites. The product was targeting a niche market and I wasn't sure that either of the two sites could accommodate my program. The first representative said flat out that he was sorry, but his site wasn't going to be any help in its current configuration. The second representative said that he worked with companies like mine all of the time and would put together a proposal and send it the following day. Well, three days later I called the representative back to see where the proposal was and he hemmed and hawed that his key Web designer was unavailable due to personal circumstances, but he would be back soon and he would send the proposal in a few days. After a week of silence, I call the representative yet again for the proposal. This time, he said that they couldn't accommodate my request now, but probably could do so in a month or so. So, I had wasted a week and a half of my time and my clients time.

As a result, I have great respect for the first media representative who told the truth and will work with him in the future and recommend him to others if the opportunity arises. As for the second media representative, he's been crossed off my list (as well as his business) for any potential future dealings.

Let's just tell the truth folks. It's a respectful way to do business.