One of the best ways to be remembered, talked about and obtain new customers is to overdeliver. Make your business overdeliver to the point that customers have to praise and talk about it. To make that easy, you must be underestimated; for when your business is underestimated, people will expect little of you. This is where you will start to shine as you exceeds everyone expectation.
How do you overdeliver? You can start by offering higher quality products at a lesser price. Give great customer service for even the slightest problems. Great services with an extra something to make a better impression. Outperform with a new approach. Change and revolutionize the whole business to something even more profitable.
Promise little but overdeliver to win your clients and stockholders. When you do so, your customers will praise about your business which will become mainstream soon enough. Your business will start to take off as word of mouth start to spread like wildfire. Overdelivering gets attention.
Overdelivering will get you to the top in business. Prospectors will want you, stock holders will buy you and customers will love you. Your business will get attention and new customers. Overdeliver to prosper.
7 Comments
This is not a bad approach and often works but it has some drawbacks and needs careful consideration:
a) I myself would not really want to deliver high quality products for lower prices … This backfires - First - it lowers the value of good product in the eyes of buyers and in a long term it can kill the product completely. Second - if the plan is to offer it at cheaper price only temporary it may not work. It is very difficult to increase prices of anything once buyers get used to certain level. You may only be bringing the prices back to the right level, but client may take it bad and go away angry… That’s what you may get for being nice
. So playing with prices should be done very carefully … Packaging the lower prices into some sort of promotional campaign is always better than simply lower the prices.
b) Over-delivering when it comes to service - Also sounds good, but also may backfire. It often happens that in order to win new client we accept orders that can’t even cover the cost of the manpower with hope that clients will appreciate and come back with something bigger. Unfortunately what often happens is, that once clients find out you are willing to do the small jobs, that is all you ever going get. The big jobs will go others …
Very good insight Biz! There’s pros and cons to everything but if it has more pros then it should be considered. It seems a and b have more cons than pros.
Good post and discussion. It’s all about finding that balance - provide value but don’t cut yourself short. If you give more value, you should expect more in return - customer loyalty, increased service rates, referral sources, etc.
As for products, I can totally see BizGiftGuru’s points - giving away tangible products is akin to giving away resources. That’s risky and quite measurable for the customer to expect and demand more. You might be taken advantage of if it goes too far.
Fortunately, I’m a marketing communications strategiest in the professional services industry - it’s all about over-delivering expectations but not to the point where you dilute your business resources to no profitability. Expect a greater ROI with enhanced service - that means following up, spending quality time in getting to know your clients and earning their trust and respect. We’re not giving away a freebie or a product, we’re sharing more of our lives with our clients - something more meaningful and of value to both parties, especially when discussing and analyzing crucial issues that impact our clients’ business and personal lives.
It certainly is a fine balance between getting the price right of your product in the first place. I noticed some marketers will offer a discount for a limited time but inform the customer of it’s original price - that way, there is no expectation to get the same low price all the time.
Good customer service and delivering above your client’s expectations will really get your customers talking (if not, in the back of their minds they will remember the great experience they have had). From here, they will either come back and do business with you again or recommend you to their business colleagues, family and friends.
Mewie- Great explanation there! You provided this article with greater value and insight! Thank you Mewie!
Marie- I totally agree. I thank you for your input and viewpoints!
Sometimes its difficult to deliver more, so its more handy to reduce their expectation. You’re right, over deliver doesn’t necessarily means giving more. It’s about managing expectation through promises etc..
Nice observation Zedd!