Over Promising Your Way To The Poorhouse
Good morning, fellow leaders. As some of you know, in one of my past business lives, I toiled away in the advertising industry. There I learned that you can really drive some great sales numbers by promising magical results for your clients. You can also create some serious bad will with many of these same clients, because, surprise, they believed you when you promised miraculous results. When your results, even though good, are short of miraculous, poof, instant disgruntled client.
I watched this trend early on in my advertising career, and I determined to build a book of business by instead under promising and then frequently over delivering to my clients. It took longer to build my client list, but they stayed with me forever because they got good results; the results that they expected.
If you are in an industry in which your clients simply have to buy “you and your promises” versus a tangible product, you can fall prey to this double edged problem. For example, in addition to the advertising business, the collections industry has a problem with this. Did you know, for example, that even the best collections agencies collect less than one third of the debt amounts they work? That’s simply the rule of the jungle that they live in. But how many collections sales reps out there close deals by promising “only” a 30 percent collection rate? Not many. Nope, they’re out there promising 70 percent or better. So most of their clients inevitably become disappointed, and search for a new agency in a few months. Churn city.
The same thing happened to me in radio advertising. I knew, for example, that the true effectiveness of a radio campaign usually didn’t kick in until 8 to 12 weeks into a schedule. The standard radio rep, however, would promise ringing phones and record sales after as little as one weekend of heavy advertising! Every day those reps pocketed commissions and tanked the credibility of my industry. I succeeded by doing exactly the opposite, but I had to slog through a lot of prospects who believed that “radio doesn’t work” because they were mishandled by one of my “miracle predicting” peers. Those prospects were the poorer for it, and in the long run, so was radio, which now is in a record decline as businesses are dropping their radio ad budgets for other media that they can control and track more effectively.
So the moral of the story? If you’re in an industry that is vulnerable to over promising, commit yourself to avoid this temptation like the plague that it is. Train your sales reps and managers to do likewise.
Don’t sell yourself down the river with easy business that’s here today and then gone tomorrow (with a vengeance, I might add). Under promise, over deliver, and track your results, not based on new contracts, but on renewed accounts quarter to quarter.
As always, if you have any stories or questions to share, I’d love to hear them!
Joe Pursch
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