Taking an overview of the situation I know we give an excellent service to our clients and they understand that we are in business to earn money. We are not willing to compromise this service by "dropping our pants" on rates and taking all the profit out of any business we win. We will however be competitive and work to find a good compromise with our clients, as we understand they need to make a profit too (we can't do business if we have no clients!).
Obviously it's going be a bit of a slower burn than I wanted as we wait for our non-profit making competitors to run them self ragged servicing accounts with no profit in. The good news is that it seems a friend of mine in the trade has had exactly the same issues in her market place throughout 2009, but her constant marketing and relationship building has begun to pay dividends in 2010 as her competitors have lost the accounts which they inevitably gave a poor service to as there was no profit in them. Now my friend has clients who are keen to have an excellent service and understand that they have to pay a reasonable amount to achieve the service levels they need.
I think the moral is don't alienate people you can't do business with now, as they could be clients soon!
