One more rule for working with customers to close out this series – never lie. They will find out and it won’t be pretty.

Honesty goes a long way in business relationships and in life. Honesty builds trust. If you lie to your customers (or to your employees or potential employees), then you’ve destroyed any trust they had for you. Once they don’t trust you, it doesn’t matter what you do, it won’t make a difference. You could bend over backwards for them, but if you’ve demonstrated that you can’t be trusted, your customers will wonder “why the show?” They will assume that you are looking to take advantage of them once again.

So never lie. Just don’t. Be honest. With everyone.