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Avoiding Over-promising and Under-delivering Part 1

by Laura Lee Rose

Avoiding

Over-promising and Under-delivering

Part 1

(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 individuals left the meeting with different ideas of what was agreed.

Problems with the above approaches

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 when you have only one or two clients. They had the time and staff to immediately respond to every request in a quick manner.

As their company grew, they could no longer keep up with the continuous demands for change within a day turn-around. Trying to accommodate the quick turn-around, they often cut corners. They soon began to hear clients complain that they were “over-promising and under-delivering”.

The clients often refused to officially approve/sign-off on anything. In client’s minds, this left the door open for additional edits and changes that they would want in the future. The clients were happy to use their work while leaving the door open for future changes. This resulted in both lost revenue and unable to close the door on a completed project.

Their desire to provide the differential for “unlimited edits” actually limited their growth potential. They were never able to complete previous projects; therefore, unable to accept new revenue generated projects.

Sales teams create general Statement of Work (SOW)

The general and vague Statements of Work (SOW) and delivery dates allowed clients to easily add features and requests under that same, ambiguous SOW (and fees). This added many hours to the product with no additional funding for the feature creep. Since the sales team also included the delivery dates in the SOW – the development and production teams consistently were working overtime, weekends and on their vacations to accommodate the sold contract.

As you can imagine, this is problematic on several levels:

1) Sales teams are simply not equipped 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.

In the desperation of making the sales, the sales staff often over-promised features, benefits and delivery schedules. Because the sales team was not aware of the development’s team current work load, they didn’t have the proper knowledge to make intelligent scheduling commitments. And to please the client, the sales team often sided with “the customer is always right” motto.

This created resentment between the development and sales staff because the development and production staff felt they were left to clean up after the sales team. The development team felt over-worked and underappreciated.

But so did the sales team. Sales worked just as hard to create the leads and make the sale. The development team didn’t understand the steps and hard work the sales force goes through to close every deal. And at the end of the day, Sales Drives the Business Bus. If it weren’t for the sales, the developers would not have this job.

Some clients will have hard-deadlines.

Sales teams often feel pressure to include deadlines because the client have their hard-deadlines to meet as well. If the client didn’t need help, they would not be purchasing these services. The clients have very good cases for these deadlines and the sales team wants to make the sale. After all, it would be very easy for the client to find another agency that would agree to the deadline. Our company might as well make the sale versus another agency.

But, we have already discussed the pitfalls of the Sales Team creating the schedules for the development team.

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. Because no notes were taken, clients felt free to change their directions at any given time.

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).

In the next article, we will discuss the solutions to the above examples.

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

Author: Laura Lee RoseHello, this is Laura Lee Rose – author of the business and time management books TimePeace: Making peace with time – The Book of Answers: 105 Career Critical Situations – and I am a business and efficiency coach that specializes in time management, project management, and work-life balance strategies. I have been in the software and testing industry for more than 20 years. I've worked with such companies as IBM, Ericsson, Staples, Fidelity Investments and Sogeti in various client advocacy and project management roles. The techniques I used in my business coaching and client advocacy work saved these companies both time and money, which resulted in on-time, quality product delivery with higher client satisfaction. Even though I excelled in the corporate environment, I felt a calling toward something more. I now uses my time management, work life balance and personal development skills as a life coach and Corporate Exit Strategist. I help people blend their goals and dreams into their everyday lives. I use creative transition strategies to help my clients realize what really matters to them. Combining inspired action with practical, tangible techniques easily lead you toward more autonomy, freedom and balance. I am a business coach and this is what I do professionally. It's easy to sign up for a complimentary one-on-one coaching call, just use this link https://www.timetrade.com/book/WFSFQ With enough notice, it would be my honor to guest-speak at no cost to your group organization.