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Dealing with small business owners
Patience and flexibility go a long way in building a good relationship with a small business owner. Most clients are conditioned to be annoying nuisances in order to get what they want through the complex hierarchy of large corporations. In large corporations responsibiity is distributed in small morsels at each level. So in order to make yourself heard you have to constantly escalate your issue to the next higher person in authority.
Such behaviour is exactly opposite to how you have to deal with a small business owner. Because one person is typically in charge, that person is armed with all the authority and knowledge to get your issue fixed. The key is not to be a nuisance but show patience, understanding and flexibility. The more you waste a small business owner with petty grievances, the more likely they are to stop doing business with you or raise your prices.
Small things are what annoy the small business owner the most. They would much rather spend their time where it is valued the most, i.e doing the specialized labor/service they are skilled at. If you can be a good customer to them, they will easily reciprocate by providing superior quality service/product. Any time they save by not doing petty things will be used to provide you with a higher quality service/product.
You should always bargain with a small business owner. Bargaining is a game in which the owner can show off their skills while testing their prospective customer. It is like an arranged marriage where both parties are trying to feel who each partner really is . If you forego bargaining , the owner will not feel you have given him a chance to explain their product/service's main selling points. Pretending to walk away just tells them you were never genuinely interested.
The goal is to find a meeting point wherein your expectations and the price come into alignment. You can not expect the world for a dime. At the same time the small business owner wants a satisfied customer who feels they are getting value for their investment. What they do not want is someone who feals short-changed and constantly complains because they had unrealistic expectations.
If you want the best price you must be proactive in researching, testing and understanding how their produect/service works. The small business owner can not keep explaining this for you when the information is readily available through their published literature, brochure and website. The more time they spend explaining simple things, the more they need to charge for their time.
Dealing with a small business is very much about interpersonal relationships. Like any relationship, you have to work at it to make it work.