Under Promise and Over Deliver
In my first “real” job after college, the first “real” CEO I ever came into contact with, pounded an important message into my mind, “Under promise and over deliver.” With my collegiate inexperience I wasn’t quite sure what his message meant. However, once I learned, through trials, tribulations, and sometimes angry customers, I realized this simple saying holds a lot of weight. These five words have always stuck with me and throughout the many experiences I've had with customers, good and bad, I've really come to understand their importance.
Chances are you’ve heard the business principle before, but I wanted to revisit the concept and what it means to your customer. What makes someone choose you over your competitor? Sure, pricing and products are a huge contributor, but what about relationships and making promises you can keep? In any type of business, especially in a service based industry, people want to know they can rely on you. When it’s all boiled down, relationships are a major part of what you are marketing. Trust is important to your customers and is something that will keep them coming back. They want to know you can do it, do it right, and that they want to rely on you to do so.
It takes more effort and expense to develop a new customer than to keep an existing one, so it’s important to do what you can to cultivate your existing relationships to maintain customer retention and satisfaction. By managing your customer’s expectations you build your client’s relationships and gain their trust. Simple things like following through on your commitments and exceeding what you said you’d do can make all the difference. Try to give a date and manage to turn it in two days early. If you know you can do it by Wednesday, always say Friday. However, if you make bold promises and fall up short, you’ll only lose your credibility and look incompetent in the end. By constantly managing your customer’s expectations, you will build a loyal customer base and even gain referrals. But hey, I’m not promising anything…