I had dinner with a close friend this evening and we talked about a number of things for hours. Over the course of our meeting my friend shared his recent unsatisfactory experience with a vendor. Being curious, I had more questions and clarifications. I wanted to understand what went wrong.

After a while I got an understanding of that particular vendor’s worldview. I have not done business with this vendor but after this whole incident something changed in my mind. The vendor moved from “Innocent until proven guilty” status to “Guily until proven innocent” status.

Of course, the vendor does not know this and that is precisely the loss he would never know. In other words, the vendor lost mindshare in his “secondary network” and in some cases it may be a loss that he cannot recover from. For instance, in this case if I don’t do business with that vendor I may not go and announce to him that this was the reason for not doing business with him or her.

Secondary networks are an important referral source for any vendor. Secondary networks trust the primary networks for initial information and screening. You mess with the primary network and you might lose a part of your secondary network – a loss that you may never know.

So, the point is that your primary network is all you have – so please take care of that.

Have a great week ahead!