Monetize Monday – In the weekly Productivity Weekly Program Mondays are days where we focus on generating revenue for the week – starting your week with intended cash flow coming in brings motivation to the week.
Business Commitments
We all make business commitments and I am safe to say from time to time we have all not kept one or two business commitments we have made. Over your business lifetime one or two missed business commitments might be a lot but if this is a pattern and happens regularly you really need to evaluate the reasons why you are not keeping the business commitments you make. Not keeping business commitments can hurt not only your reputation but your business success as well. Once you start to lose a good business reputation, people start to find other people to work with and you never want your customers/clients/team members to move and work with someone else… and trying to come back from a BAD reputation can really hamper your growth and success.
What kinds of Business Commitments am I talking about?
- returning a call
- mailing/shipping something when you said you would
- having a job completed when you said it would be done (and NO direct outside issues delayed the progress)
- promising to help someone and not following through
- not supplying information to your team members
- not sending an email as promised
- not checking voice mail in a reasonable amount of time
- not making payments when they are due
The list goes on…
Be honest with yourself on how many and what kinds of business commitments you don’t keep. Self evaluation and self awareness is not the easiest thing to do in your life BUT it is necessary! Be 100% honest – write down commitments you have made over the last month and the outcome – did you keep them all, most of them or hardly any? Are people still waiting for you?
Why have you not kept those business commitments? Did you over commit yourself? Did you forget? Did you get caught up in just wanting to say you could get it done? Think of the “contractor stigma – it is really hard to find a contractor to do work and keep to the
Business Commitments – Complete Them, Don’t Make Excuses of Why
time line they give you so that industry has a bad wrap… there are far too many jokes and angry people created from working with contractors that do not keep their word – so being an upstanding contractor, and there are a lot of them out there for sure, find it is hard to be trusted that they are different” Don’t be labeled! Don’t make business harder for yourself. Don’t get labeled!
Make a Business Commitment Change TODAY!
Decide today to revisit those business commitments you have not completed. Speak with the people you made the business commitments to and apologize for the delay and SCHEDULE them to get them completed! Be sure to space them out as best you can. Make sure you have all of the information you are going to need to complete the business commitment and make your newly set deadlines.
You need to make sure you are “planning and scheduling” them properly so they are doable in the time frame you are committing to now. You must be using a project/task tracking sytem that works for you, we recommend and support the Tickler File system.
In moving forward it is key you evaluate and check your schedule before committing to any other business tasks for other people so you do not get into a bind and run the risk of negatively impacting your reputation. This goes for any bartering agreements as well – be sure you can complete the task requested in the time frame it was requested to be done.