101 Best Sales and Marketing Ideas
IDEA 58:
PROMISES, PROMISES
We all like it when someone makes and keeps a promise. We expect them to keep it, and it is, well, nice when they do. In selling and doing business with customers many promises are made: to deliver on a particular day, allow time for payment, give an extra discount. You have to keep them, and usually you do. If the company fails to deliver on anything like this, for instance not producing the goods on a particular day when the customer need them, it matters and you will find yourself with a complaint to handle; and quite right too.
You can are also use promises that are not so major to help you sell successfully.
Idea
This thought is prompted by rather fewer good experiences than might be hope for….
A promise kept does not just satisfy the customer on the particular matter to which it relates, it also sends out signals. While the major things tend to be accepted as givens –delivery promised for the 25th and made on the 25th –little things are viewed differently. Yet “smaller” things can have a big impact, and many small things quickly mount up. Promise to ring back by 2.30pm, and you must do just that. Promise to have an e-mail in the customer’s in-box within an hour and it must be there. Yet it is precisely such “little” things that can be missed. Something happens, and it’s 2.45 when you ring. But somehow you figure you meant “about” 2.30, and don’t even apologize, telling yourself there’s no harm done.
Customers regard such things as sign that does way beyond the import of the particular matter. First, they want to deal with someone who is reliable. The effect is cumulative. If you keep many small promises, it gives a good, positive impression. It enhances your profile, and makes trust and agreement more likely and vice versa off course. Furthermore, failures in such small matters are seen as a sign – an unwelcome sign – off likely future inattention to detail. Let a customer down on thing and they are entitled to say, “What else don’t they bother about?”
In practice
- Resolve to take this issue seriously and it will work effectively for you. Go on –promise yourself you will.