Be Honest and Admit Your Mistakes

When you’re doing work in the service industry there are going to be people who are scumbags. Don’t be one of those people.

Be Honest

Don’t commit to things you can’t do. Don’t promise a fully developed site by 6pm tonight. Don’t say yes to a project before you know all of the goals and objectives of the project.

Too often, in this industry and others, people commit to jobs they can’t do because they’re afraid to say, “I can’t do this”. Why? It doesn’t make sense. When you say yes to something you can’t do and you don’t deliver, not only do you look like a jackass but you hurt the reputation of your respective industry.

I’ve been watching a lot of that show Holmes on Homes and in every episode he is dealing with people like this. They over promise and under deliver. They do crappy work and still take their clients money. Be the opposite of that.

Tell your client what you can deliver that fits within their budget, timeline, and, most importantly, fulfills their objectives. Under promise and over deliver. It will be less stress for both parties and creates a better working atmosphere. You’ll be happier with the work you’ve produced and your client will not only respect you more as a professional, but will also be happy that you stayed true to your commitment.

Admit your mistakes

Sometimes schedules get skewed, things come up, life happens. Mistakes are a part of life, you’re never going to be 100% mistake free. When you do make mistakes tell your client as soon as possible. Do you have a deliverable due tomorrow and you’re not at a point that you feel comfortable showing it? Tell your client today. They may not be excited to hear that you’re going to miss the deadline, but they’ll appreciate the honesty and transparency of the way you do business.

Sometimes there are communication mishaps, they happen. Be clear about what happened and how it happened along with a solution to prevent this from happening again.

Its messed up

Its messed up that so many businesses aren’t run this way, but it’s the sad truth of today. If you do these two things not only will you have better client relationships, but your business will be respected and getting repeat business from clients won’t be a issue.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 5th, 2010 at 11:00 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.