I have the good fortune of working for an amazing company that has built local marketing software. I am part of the national sales team and work to sell our world class local marketing automaton technology.

In sales, our focus is usually to close the deal and get the business in house. Good sales people have integrity and focus on the client’s needs and proper fit of the product they sell.

Unfortunately, with dollars tight and quarterly goals looming large, what is best for the client can become secondary to what is best for the company. I have worked for companies in the past where this has been the case. Recently, as an employee of Balihoo, I witnessed something very different.

We offer local media buying and planning services as part of our solution. I had a client that wanted us to do media plans for all of his Franchisee markets in addition to building a platform for their company. This was a substantial piece of business and was exciting to both management and the media team. Our media director personally took responsibility for the first plan to set the tone for the entire relationship. As the exploratory phase of the project progressed, she came to me with some concerns. It had become evident through the brief with the market Franchisee and through her research that what they really needed was not a 12 month market strategy and media plan but rather tactical one to one efforts that would not involve traditional media or digital efforts. In this case, the target was so narrow that any method other than one to one engagement would generate too much waste of materials or resources making it cost prohibitive.

The decision was made to call the client and tell them we could not plan for them or take this piece of business as it was not  what they needed. When my media director spoke with the client he was thrilled. He had thought the same thing, but had brought us in as a third party source in hopes of validating his suspicions.

We walked away from the business, and in doing so, did the right thing. This may not seem like a big deal to some, but I think it is what makes my company great. The integrity of the individuals that make up my company is key to the foundation of our current and future success. I am proud to work for Balihoo.