I recently found out that a customer of mine decided to take their business to a major competitor. I spoke with one of the leadership staff, with whom I have a good relationship with, and asked if there was anything we did wrong to cause the switch, they said “you did nothing wrong, the CEO just wants to pursue a relationship with <Competitor>.” There was no indication of anything wrong with the product or the service before all of this happened.

We had been doing business for a few years and the CEO was very enthusiastic about bringing our product into use at their company. Our team heeded to their requests and went above and beyond in customer service and product consistency. Additionally, we are a major donor and sponsor of their charity and have been since the start of our business relationship.

I’ve recently seen on social media that they’re promoting the use of the competitor’s product with content that they shot of our product (and have proof of because I have the originals where we were tagged). What’s worse is that they gave that content to the competitor to post and they’re posting it all around.

This has put me through the ringer emotionally. I am embarassed and humiliated. I’m wondering what possibly went wrong for them to pull the rug from under us and go to the competitor. And I’m also disgusted that a competitor would lack that much integrity to post content of a product that they definitively know wasn’t theirs. To rub more salt in the wound, we have a scheduled meeting with the charity to go through this year’s upcoming events.

I want the account back but don’t know how to go about this in a way that is dignified, doesn’t make me look like i’m begging, and that is respectful to the relationships I have with other leadership team members at the organization.

Any advice or words of encouragement are appreciated