Posted by: dgrissom
Category: Leadership Mastery, Retaining Winners
Deliver on your promises
Do you heed your promises to the customer, even the unspoken ones?
Maintaining the relationship means maintaining credibility and trust. Maintaining credibility and trust means delivering on your promises. It means you do what you said you were going to do. To those of us who are continually in STEP-UP mode, this is second nature. However, to many good performers it is one of the things that keeps them from moving from good to great.
There are two primary reasons why we either don’t deliver on our promises, or why our customers don’t think we deliver on our promises. Pay close attention here, as this distinction is of staggering importance.
First. We get into trouble by assuming. We assume we know what’s best for the client. We assume we’re all on the same page. For example, we assume that because we are comfortable with sliding schedules, that the customer is, too.
Let me illustrate. Think about a situation where you promised the customer you would deliver on Thursday, but you got busy and the delivery time slipped into Friday. You decide that the difference between Thursday afternoon and Friday morning isn’t that big of a deal. But guess what? It’s not how you see it that matters – it’s how the customer sees it that determines your credibility. For many customers – especially the Type A, highly driven kind – 5 PM on Thursday means 5 PM on Thursday. 9 AM on Friday morning means you did not deliver on your promise.
Second. We get into trouble by communicating poorly. We thought we agreed to X, when in fact, they heard X and something else. We endanger our ability to deliver on our promises because we aren’t straight, clear and definitive on what those promises are. So, an important step in delivering on your promises is to be straight, clear and definitive about what you promised. Understand there may be differences between what you thought you promised and what the customer thought you promised, or what he expects from you. You serve both interests by taking the time to ensure you’re both on the same page, and that it’s the right page for the customer.
How will you ensure you understand and make good on your promises, even the unspoken ones?
