Lasting relationships don’t just happen overnight. This is true in your personal life, but especially in business. It takes time to develop trust, rapport, and that goes hand in hand with consistent work. We’ve picked up a few tips along the journey and are always happy to share our success and even some of our failures.
Secret 4: Expectations
We have a motto posted around our office – “Set expectations. Assume nothing.”
Communicating clear expectations is one of the most important secrets to building a lasting relationship. It is vital for relationships at home, at work, or just with friends. In order to have good communication you need to set expectations right from the beginning, especially in business relationships in order to maximize success and eliminate disappointment.
When you set expectations early on you minimize confusion, take accountability, and have a clear picture of what is expected for both parties. You are establishing your role, capabilities, and even your limitations. We’ve learned the hard way through past experience and financial consequences to never assume someone else is handling or is responsible for something on a project. That’s a sure way to have something blow up in your face.
That’s why it is especially important to be straight forward about what services you do or do not provide. When you clearly communicate, you are setting the expectation for what is to come. We try very hard to set expectations for our customers at the get go.
Overall, we try to exceed our customers expectations. When people want to work with you, they expect results and you need to deliver.
We recently sat down with one of our industry partners, Brivo, and had clear expectations laid out for future partnership. Having open communication and dialog in business relationships is the key to ensuring they are of lasting duration.
Cultivating trust in a relationship is very important for us and we are happy to partner with someone that understands and communicates clear expectations.
So the takeaway – do what you say you are going to do. When you can establish trust in business and personal relationships, people trust you, and they will do business with you!