One of the great challenges as a sales professional is to never overpromise in the midst of being very excited about what you are representing. It is the salesman’s job to set expectations so that the client comes out on the other end with a positive, if not an exceptional experience.

I like to give this example: A salesman is selling a widget. He has the opportunity to sell 100 widgets to a client, but is pretty certain that the client will only resell 50 of those widgets. However, his company will be really happy with him if he sells 100 because it will make the company’s quarter. So he sells up, and the client buys 100, resells 50 units, and isn’t quite satisfied with the results. In fact, the client looks at the result as a failure even when the customer had the opportunity to return the 50 unsold widgets.

Now consider the scenario where the salesman sells the client a total of 50 widgets, and the client blows through them all. The net result for the salesman’s company is the same, although the company didn’t get to book as much revenue in the previous quarter as they wanted. The client’s perception of the deal however, is greatly changed. This deal was a great success for them even though they sold the same amount of widgets as the first scenario. The deal met or exceeded their expectations.

I recently had a real world example of this at Snowfall Press. I had a new publisher client who needed 40 advance reader copies delivered to the author on Saturday, and the client and I were talking on Thursday evening. I helped them load their file at 6 PM central time, and our production team was able to print the book within an hour, meet the late pick-up deadlines at the airport, and have the book delivered to the author (halfway across the country) in less than 24 hours (on Friday).*

We didn’t promise the client we could do this, however, our team exceeded their expectations and they/we have a great story to tell. Kudos goes to our production team for accomplishing this. I hope this has now secured a new customer relationship and through the telling of this story, influences others to give Snowfall Press a try.

Have you ever experienced a company who has exceeded your expectations?

*Disclaimer: This turnaround time is not what we advertise. We recommend 48 hours before shipping to ensure enough time in the schedule. We also recommend printing a proof prior to printing any volume to make sure everything prints as expected.