Stand Up to Your Commitments
Stand up to your commitments!
As a business owner - or in life in general, things can get hectic, and crazy.
Sometimes you might feel like a chicken running around with your head cut off, and even though you are human, as a business owner you have a responsibility to your clients.
If you wish to maintain good relationships with your clients, you have to be organized, and you have to keep your commitments.
If you make a mistake you should definitely own up to it as soon as possible!
Although there may be repercussions even if you admit a mistake and try to fix the problem immediately, chances are that they will be less than they would be if you didn't admit the mistake - or worse denied that a mistake had happened in the first place.
I recently scheduled a phone consultation with someone who didn't call me at the time we scheduled for our appointment.
Trust me, I thought that I must have misunderstood, I reread the email several times, and I'd even confirmed with the date and time with the consultant since there were different time zones involved.
After waiting for 3 hours after the scheduled time (it was supposed to be a skype conference) I decided to look to make sure that the meeting was supposed to be at 11AM, and not 11 PM. Sure enough, she had written "tomorrow at 9 AM MST" in the confirmation email.
Whew, I wasn't going crazy.
It's been a day since our scheduled appointment, and I still haven't heard from her.
If this situation happened to you, would it affect your view of the consultant?
Would you want to give her your hard earned money to let her teach you if she wasn't able to keep your first appointment, or would you search for another consultant who had better time management skills?
I know that I'm pretty busy, and I don't have time to make appointments with people that aren't going to keep them. Now there may be some circumstances that would cause me to reconsider, and continue to do business with a person who had stood me up, if things were explained in a timely manner, but I can't think of too many.
Now this is situation where I probably never would have named names, unless someone specifically asked me about my experiences with this consultant, but It just so happened that I had guests call and ask if they could come over shortly before our scheduled appointment time. I told them that they could come over, but I had an appointment for a consultation that was to be held over the computer, so they could come, but they had to be quiet so the consultant wouldn't hear their conversation.
Of course when my guests arrived, the first thing they did was ask about the consultation, and if the person had called yet, and how it went - of course I had to tell them what was going on - and that was the first time my guests had ever heard of this person.
Chances are they won't be using the consultant's services because she didn't call me at our scheduled appointment time. I wasn't trying to give her negative publicity, but based on the circumstances, I did just the same.
On another occasion I won a door price at an online conference.
I was told to email the people who were running the conference with my contact information, and they would pass it along to the person who donated the prize.
I never heard back from them, or from the person who donated the prize that I won.
How would that make you feel about the company, or the person who donated the prize?
I have to tell you I'll definitely look at the people who were involved in that conference with a more skeptical eye than I would have before I attended the conference.
Unfortunately, the way your business is viewed is based on the perceptions of other people, and you can't control all of those perceptions.
You can only do your best to influence those perceptions so that they will be positive ones.
When you do something, think about how it will affect your business, and other people's perceptions of your business.
Do your best to provide the best quality products and/or services possible, and keep your promises, and hopefully everyone that comes in contact you will have a positive perception of you and your business!
Good luck!Best Wishes For a Prosperous Business,
Sarah
As a business owner - or in life in general, things can get hectic, and crazy.
Sometimes you might feel like a chicken running around with your head cut off, and even though you are human, as a business owner you have a responsibility to your clients.
If you wish to maintain good relationships with your clients, you have to be organized, and you have to keep your commitments.
If you make a mistake you should definitely own up to it as soon as possible!
Although there may be repercussions even if you admit a mistake and try to fix the problem immediately, chances are that they will be less than they would be if you didn't admit the mistake - or worse denied that a mistake had happened in the first place.
I recently scheduled a phone consultation with someone who didn't call me at the time we scheduled for our appointment.
Trust me, I thought that I must have misunderstood, I reread the email several times, and I'd even confirmed with the date and time with the consultant since there were different time zones involved.
After waiting for 3 hours after the scheduled time (it was supposed to be a skype conference) I decided to look to make sure that the meeting was supposed to be at 11AM, and not 11 PM. Sure enough, she had written "tomorrow at 9 AM MST" in the confirmation email.
Whew, I wasn't going crazy.
It's been a day since our scheduled appointment, and I still haven't heard from her.
If this situation happened to you, would it affect your view of the consultant?
Would you want to give her your hard earned money to let her teach you if she wasn't able to keep your first appointment, or would you search for another consultant who had better time management skills?
I know that I'm pretty busy, and I don't have time to make appointments with people that aren't going to keep them. Now there may be some circumstances that would cause me to reconsider, and continue to do business with a person who had stood me up, if things were explained in a timely manner, but I can't think of too many.
Now this is situation where I probably never would have named names, unless someone specifically asked me about my experiences with this consultant, but It just so happened that I had guests call and ask if they could come over shortly before our scheduled appointment time. I told them that they could come over, but I had an appointment for a consultation that was to be held over the computer, so they could come, but they had to be quiet so the consultant wouldn't hear their conversation.
Of course when my guests arrived, the first thing they did was ask about the consultation, and if the person had called yet, and how it went - of course I had to tell them what was going on - and that was the first time my guests had ever heard of this person.
Chances are they won't be using the consultant's services because she didn't call me at our scheduled appointment time. I wasn't trying to give her negative publicity, but based on the circumstances, I did just the same.
On another occasion I won a door price at an online conference.
I was told to email the people who were running the conference with my contact information, and they would pass it along to the person who donated the prize.
I never heard back from them, or from the person who donated the prize that I won.
How would that make you feel about the company, or the person who donated the prize?
I have to tell you I'll definitely look at the people who were involved in that conference with a more skeptical eye than I would have before I attended the conference.
Unfortunately, the way your business is viewed is based on the perceptions of other people, and you can't control all of those perceptions.
You can only do your best to influence those perceptions so that they will be positive ones.
When you do something, think about how it will affect your business, and other people's perceptions of your business.
Do your best to provide the best quality products and/or services possible, and keep your promises, and hopefully everyone that comes in contact you will have a positive perception of you and your business!
Good luck!Best Wishes For a Prosperous Business,
Sarah
posted by Sarah at
1:33 PM
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