Great expectations: why you need them to be clear

I lost a client today. Someone I respected as another marketing professional.

And I lost this person because of expectations. His expectations (right or wrong) were not met and as a result, he was disappointed.

Setting expectations needs two components: the ability to listen and the ability to educate. I believe I failed on the latter.

I recently had changed the way I have been communicating and tracking info from clients, and somehow thought he understood that. He also asked for additional information above what I normally do. It wasn’t wrong, but what he expected. I should have explained the process better.

Lesson learned.

Making sure client expectations are set will determine success or failure. Sure, the other portions of the project are important but if the client you’re doing work for doesn’t have a clear understanding of what they’re getting and when they should expect it, you’ll fail. No matter how wonderful your work is… No matter how fast you produce… it won’t matter to the client.

As for me, I’ve already implemented another process/system to help make sure the client is comfortable with how I work, using an online project management system.

So is the client always right? Sort of. But we need to manage their expectations better in order to help them always BE right.