“You did what you said you were going to do!” was shared in amazement by a customer. I was equally amazed, but for a different reason. Why was this a surprise? Evidently, this customer had experiences that left expectations unmet. How does this happen?
- Were expectations set up front and why weren’t they met?
- Desperate for a sale, was the sales person caught up in a slight exaggeration?
- Was there an unintentional omission of critical information?
- Was the scope of work fully defined and was there understanding with the connected pieces outside of the scope?
- Who was coordinating and overseeing the post sale efforts?
Regardless, unmet expectations leads to a lack of trust and confidence. Fortunately, one of our core values for 30 years has been “Golden Rule” treatment, we treat customers the way we want to be treated. We deploy solutions the way we would want them deployed if we were in their shoes.
- For systems, we take painful measures (painful from a sales standpoint because the detail slow down the sales process) to document ALL of the details – and I mean ALL – carefully designing the system and sharing with the customer for a common understanding before moving forward.
- For equipment, wherever possible we encourage a “try before you buy” methodology so there are no surprises and the end users can actually touch and see if the device meets their needs before investing time and money. Providing demo equipment is not always economical or easy.
- It is also painful from a sales standpoint because it would be more expeditious to just take the order without a demo or trial evaluation.
When you see my title, some will dismiss this as just “sales speak” from a guy trying to get more business and you’d be partially right – I am always looking for new customers to serve. But I can sleep at night knowing that we aim to provide Golden Rule treatment to customers and to potential customers allowing us to succeed more exponentially more times than we fail. Don’t take my word for it, ask one of hundreds of satisfied customer if we did what we said we were going to do.
