Winning Back Advocates

I know someone I like really well that has her own business. She is good at what she does and was priced so well that it was easy to refer business to her. Unfortunately, she got so busy and she did not follow up on her employee's work, that things started to fall through the cracks and I started hearing a lot of negative buzz about her. Luckily, she did not hurt my reputation too much with the people I sent her way. Of course, I stopped referring people to her. That got me thinking though. What would it take for her to win me back as an advocate?

• Positive Word of Mouth from multiple people.
• Clear successes that are above and beyond what I think her every day job is.
• A solid understanding of how she has improved her business processes.
• Referrals to me.
• Being sure she delivers and follows up on anything she promises.
• Not to give me any BS. Tell me what the problems were and how you fixed them.

Winning back an advocate is much harder than winning them in the first place. Even though you may be good at what you do, if you are not good at running a company and managing expectations it can lead to wide spread dissatisfaction.