These are words  given to me by an elderly neighbor friend from my adolescent days of mowing lawns. They have resonated with me throughout my years and has proven to be time-tested advice.

I recently read an article from a marketing consultant that claimed there is a paradox between what you promise and what you can deliver. He claims that If you promise very little, you don’t get a chance to deliver because I’ll ignore you. And if you promise too much, you don’t get a chance to deliver, because I won’t believe you.

I really do not see a paradox but a metric to measure your ability to serve your market. If you promise only what you can deliver and it is not good enough for your customer, then your services are not robust enough to serve that market. You need to improve to meet the challenge.

As for promising too much how can you do that if you only promise what you can do? If you can do it, let your customer know why you can and with examples of what you have done. If you both are confident that it can be done then it is a sale.

I had a mowing customer that needed her property line cleared of overgrowth. I wanted the job but not having a driver’s license I could not haul the refuse to the dump. I could have told her I could do the job but her knowing that I did not drive she would not have believed me and not given me the job.

I stuck to my mantra of say what you can do and do what you say you can do. Since what I could do was not good enough, I hired a friend with a pick up truck to haul the stuff away.

I asked for the job and told her how I would tackle it. She and I were both confident with the arrangement and I got the job.

Lucky for me I found a company to work for with similar work ethics. When you call in  for technical assistance, we application engineers drawing upon our experience, will share with you what will and will not work for your application. On those situations where it is questionable, we will tell you so. Then EXAIR will back it up with a an unconditional 30 day guarantee. If for any reason you are not satisfied with the results you can return it for full credit.

Joe Panfalone
Application Engineer
joepanfalone@exair.com