In life you have the right to say no, but somehow in business, you don’t always feel that you can, and that is one of the many reasons projects fail unfortunately.
Too many projects start out on the back foot where the deadlines and scope to be delivered within that timeframe have already been decided, and most of the time by people who are not close enough, or qualified enough, to make this decision.
I can hear you say, sure Bert what would you have us do when the client dictates deadlines to us, you cannot go back and say no? True, but you don’t have to accept these types of ultimatums either, if you are serious about servicing your clients, you need to discuss the benefit of delivering either less scope or the same scope in more time in order to best meet their expectations.
What is happening currently is that we accept these unrealistic requests under the guise of client service and the only thing we end up doing is damaging the very thing we set out not to do, and that is having an unsatisfied client that does not want to do business with you anymore because you don’t deliver on expectations etc.
If however you say NO upfront, and take some time to find out what the drivers are behind the pre-set deadlines, and try and understand what you can do to help your client succeed, you will most probably find that you can actually deliver value in the required timeframe, and not only have a happy customer but also a successfully delivered project and most likely some recurring business on top of that.
So, the next time you face the gauntlet with unrealistic deadlines and requests, step back and rather ask how you can assist your client to succeed rather than just blindly scrambling to try to deliver against impossible odds. Say NO and start the discovery process from there and make your “difficult” client one of your biggest.
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