Under-delivering – a surefire strategy for failure

Marketing Tip… from Neville Pokroy

In this challenging economy, whether you are high end or economy style business, it’s a surefire way to get butt kicked by your competition. So, here I am. Sunday January 4th 2009. 4.30pm. Firmly seated on the floor in the Fort Lauderdale airport, waiting for Air Canada to deliver me back home in Toronto. I’m actually working, believe it or not. What else can I do with a 9 hour wait?

I’m sitting at the Delta Airlines gate and I have just had an epiphany. It just isn’t good business to sell more tickets than your airplanes can carry. That’s just what they have told the waiting passengers, and they have directed them to wait at another gate for the next flight, “however, don’t get your hopes up because that flight is already oversold by 11 passengers!”

I know that the airlines are trying to max out their capacities, but doesn’t that sound a little ridiculous. They’re even paying some of their passengers $400 not to fly so that they can get 1 or 2 passengers on that are really desperate. Now, does that sound like really good business to you??

When I look at the faces of the disappointed passengers, I see abject disappointment and frustration. Anger has been replaced by total resignation that they won’t make it home as expected or planned. And it’s not even their fault.

In the tough economic times that we all find ourselves in, surely we should look at smarter ways to do business? Surely we should focus on giving people a GOOD REASON TO USE OUR SERVICES, not a good reason to use someone else’s services. Instead of looking at Under-promising and Over-delivering, maybe OVER-PROMISE AND OVER-DELIVER is the way to go. At least then we can’t look at ourselves after the fact and say we could have done better. Or we should have tried more.

Maybe striving to do even more is the way to go. Maybe you can even make it a news year’s resolution. I certainly will be doing that…

It’s Marketing SMART to take this approach.

Click here to find out where to begin with SMART marketing

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