Delivering on never

I saw this post, Son, on Seth’s Blog and thought of giving you my thoughts on these “never’s”

I will never miss a deadline

I will never leave a typo

I will never fail to warn you about a possible pitfall

I will never charge you more than the competition

I will never violate a confidence

I will never let you down

I will never be late for a meeting

There are lots of sorts of never you can deliver to a customer. You can't deliver all of them, of course. Picking your never and sticking with it is a fabulous way to position yourself.

Lets see what has been my experience with this.

I will never miss a deadline. I usually aim to do this. And frequently do succeed. Its rare that I miss deadlines at work. At home, frequently which winds up your mum totally. But if I have given a date, I usually meet it. But then when people ask me for a date, I usually think things through thoroughly and give a realistic date.

I will never leave a typo. That’s vital, an official communication with a typo is cretinism. Can ruin your life because the first impression that the person had was that you are not to be trusted. On the damn iphone, autocorrect keeps on making doozies of mistakes and even sometimes here on the blog. I once made a mistake of inviting people over to “sinner” instead of dinner. Not good.

I will never fail to warn you about a possible pitfall. This is good, but you have to be careful that you dont get a reputation of being a cassandra. Remember that nobody wants to hear “I told you so”, it irritates people even those who you warned. So warn people about a pitfalls and then also give solutions. If they listen, good, if not, forget it. Then when the pitfall does happen, give the solution and help them implement. Dont ever say “i told you so”, its useless and doesnt help anything or anyone.

I will never charge you more than the competition. I tend to disagree with this. I FREQUENTLY charge more than the competition and I have very good reasons for this as I am the best, my products are the best, my firm is the best and my customer service is the best. So for being the best, you get to charge more than the competition. But be careful that you are able to show the clear value add and not just a vague arrogance.

I will never violate a confidence. Absolutely, keep your gob shut. Be known as a person who can keep his mouth shut.

I will never let you down. This is a tough one, given that our jobs are dependent upon so many different factors and people, trying to claim this is very tough, but good to aim for.

I will never be late for a meeting. I absolutely hate this, people being late for a meeting. Once in a while stuff happens, but that’s supposed to be bloody exceptions.

Does this help?