Avoiding Over-promising and Under-delivering Part 2

(Clarity of Expectations)

Career Management Series

By Laura Lee Rose

Hello, this is Laura Lee Rose – author of TimePeace: Making peace with time – and I am a business and efficiency coach that specializes in time management, project management and work-life balance strategies. I help busy professionals and entrepreneurs create effective systems so that they can comfortably delegate to others, be more profitable and have time to enjoy life even if they don’t have time to learn new technology or train their staff. I have a knack for taking big ideas and converting them into smart, sound, and actionable ideas.

At the end of the day, I transform the way you run your business into a business you love to run.

Today’s topic is centered on the trap of trying to fully satisfying the client.

I’ve worked with several companies that have every intention of fully satisfying the client and consistently miss the make. The shared issue was their lack of explicit requirements and unclear expectations.

Some Examples:

· One company prides themselves in providing Unlimited Edits/Changes, and Quick Response for their web designs.

· Another company had their sales teams create general and vague Statements of Work (SOW) and delivery dates.

· Another company held Kick-off meetings between their development team and their client. While this was the right thing to do, the meetings were not structured, no notes were taken, and individual left the meeting with different ideas of what occurred in the meeting

In the previous article (Avoiding Over-promising and Under-delivering Part 1), we outlined the problems with the above approaches. This articles we will cover some solutions.

Solution

Although the problems were somewhat different, the solution was the same. They all needed to get more specific in what they were going to deliver and in what timeframe (as well as documenting every step).

Let’s take each example separately.

Unlimited Edits/Changes at no extra charge

· One company pride themselves in providing Unlimited Edits/Changes, and Quick Response.

This company valued their stand on Unlimited Edits/Changes. This distinguished them apart from every other Web Design Service. This is fine. But it is unreasonable to provide unlimited number of edits/changes in the same short time period. Similarly, you can not fit an unlimited amount of sand in a 5 pound bag. It is simply physically unreasonable.

A better solution is contract for a certain number of Hours of Work (agree to a specific size of bag). The client can request as many edits/changes that they require. They are not being charged by the edit. They are being charged for the time. They can fit as many changes as can fit in those hours. When the hours/bag is filled, the client purchases another set of hours.

Also – I recommend explicitly identifying exactly what is covered in the “unlimited edits” offer. For example: Unlimited edits on the LogoX and Home Page Section A,B,C.

Notice that stating unlimited edits on Home Page – is not sufficient. The initial SOW (or scope of work) may have included a simple Home Page. But the client may require additional sections, features and enhancements to the Home Page – that were not discussed in the original SOW. Without clearly identifying what the “unlimited edits” cover, you are leaving money on the contract table.

Sales teams create general Statement of Work (SOW)

This is problematic on several levels:

1) Sales teams do not have the expertise to determine the level of effort for the SOW

2) Sales teams are not aware of the development team’s current task list, vacation schedule, or work schedule.

3) Sales teams should not be agreeing to delivery schedules before the full project is understood and without the production team’s input.

Some clients will have hard-deadlines.

Sales teams often feel pressure to include deadlines because the client will say they have hard-deadlines to meet (market release, trade-show, public announcements, etc).

In these instances, you ask the clients for the minimum requirements needed for that deadline date. Then guide the clients toward a reasonable scope of work for that timeline. After all, you are the expert in this area. They are paying you for your expertise and recommendations. You allow them to drive when it’s in their area of work, and you drive when it’s in your area.

Kick-off meetings between their development team and their client.

Having a kick-off meeting between the development team and the client is an extremely good approach, if conducted properly. If not conducted properly, it often causes more tension and confusion.

The Kick-off meeting should include the Sales Lead, the Client Point-Person, and development member that would be doing the actual work.

The Kick-off meeting should include the following:

1) Specific goals for the meeting

2) Introduction of the Scope of Work (from the client’s perspective). The sales lead is there to correct or clarify the Scope of Work from the company’s perspective.

3) Agenda (with time-length) that support only the meeting goals

4) Tape/Record the meeting for future reference

5) Summary with action items and owners

6) Follow-up email within 2 days with the proposed schedule for the deliverables.

I do not recommend that schedules are discussed in the Kick-off meeting between the client and the development team. This meeting is specifically designed to clearly convey the Scope of Work (from the client’s perspective) to the development team. This meeting is not to decide the Level of Effort – which is required to create an accurate delivery schedule.

To avoid under-delivering, you need to fully understand the effort required to deliver the scope of work.

I know your situation will be different. For additional information on this topic, please contact LauraRose@RoseCoaching.info

I am a business coach and this is what I do professionally. It’s easy to sign up for a complementary one-on-one coaching call, just use this link https://www.timetrade.com/book/WFSFQ