How to lose a customer (even if you have a good service)
Business blunder #2
Dec 11, 2022 — Greetings from Hamburg Germany
Today, I’m writing to you with another business blunder.
It’s a mistake I recently made for my new ghostwriting client. I hope you don’t get the impression that all I do in business is make mistakes, but I’ve found my mistakes to be great teachers.
So I’d like to share them with you too.
The Story of a Twitter Micro-Influencer
I have a friend with 90,000 Twitter followers.
He offers 1-on-1 Zoom calls for $400 an hour. And people buy them, every week.
But here’s a catch…
Even though the event says 1 hour, he always blocks off 1.5 hours in his personal calendar.
And when the call hits 55 minutes, he gives the same little speech…
“Hey man I see you looking at the clock. I’ve got nothing going on this evening, if you don’t mind, we can keep the conversation going.”
“IF YOU DON’T MIND???”
Of course, they don’t f*ing mind. They love it. They’re thrilled every time!
He underpromises and overdelivers.
Only after he revealed this to me, I realized I had done the exact opposite for my new client…
The mistake I made ghostwriting
For my first client, I grew their account by 1,897 followers in 28 days.
And so, I decided to create a bonus clause for my next client.
The contract stated:
If we hit 5,000 new followers in 3 months, I’ll receive a significant cash bonus.
But I quickly realized, my stellar first performance had less to do with my out-of-this-world-writing-skills and more to do with my client’s powerful network of
• venture capitalists,
• entrepreneurs
• and Twitter micro influencers
who liked and retweeted all of our Tweets…
And so, one and a half weeks into my new engagement, and it looks unlikely that we’ll hit the 5,000 mark over the next 3 months (although there’s still a chance for things to compound in our favor).
So far, he’s happy with the service, but it’s unlikely that I’ll overdeliver.
It’s about setting expectations
It takes intention to underpromise and overdeliver.
Because our instinct is to do the opposite. It feels good to make big promises and create anticipation. And when you really wanna close that client, you might even trick yourself.
But it’s a recipe for unsatisfied customers.
If you want people to buy from you again and again and tell all their friends, underpromise and overdeliver.