How often do you find yourself over-delivering to your clients because you feel it’s the right thing to do but then failing to actually tell them you have given them more value?
This is a very common mistake that service based professionals make.
It’s fine to over-deliver and give your clients more value, but if you don’t tell them they won’t see you’ve done anything other than exactly what you quoted for in the first place.
Net result is you’ve spent more time on a job without gaining any more revenue or goodwill from the client.
In fact you’ve actually shot yourself in the foot as they now think that level of delivery is normal so they will expect it next time!
And there’s a good chance that you’ve done this over and over again.
OK, so how do you fix this?
Step 1: Recognise when you are doing it. Realistically this over-delivering behaviour comes from your desire to serve your clients so you need to be clear about what you should be delivering as part of the scope you have agreed with them. Once you are clear about that then it’s easier to recognise when you are going above and beyond.
Step 2: Identify the over-delivery required. Size up the extra that you want to deliver and then make a clear commercial decision about what to do. Obviously if you made a mistake in pricing it up then you probably need to suck it up and deliver it without any additional charge. Usually your desire to deliver a good service drives the over-delivery so in most cases you could go back to your client and ask if they want the extra bells & whistles for £X rather than delivering it anyway.
Step 3: Continual practice. If your desire to over-deliver is totally endemic in all you do then you need to change your pricing strategy to allow for it. This way you and your clients will reap the rewards of your behaviour.
If you do this correctly you’ll either save yourself time and/or generate some more revenue, so it’s a lovely win:win as the clients still get a great service.
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