The Boss of You

We’ve all been in a situation where we’re looking for some thing/service to solve a problem. It might be as simple new cel phone that promises features that will make your life oh-so-much simpler, or a new faster internet connection that will allow you to get things done sooner, or even a new account with a financial institution that won’t charge you all the unnecessary fees of your current account. Regardless of what it is, I find that I’m always a little unnerved when the sales rep person I’m meeting with never says no.

Me: “Does this phone make it easy to take and send photos?”

Sales Rep: “Yes!”

Me: “Will this new phone make it easier for me to get ahold of Oprah to tell her about my fabulous new book?”

SR: “You betcha!”

You know what I mean? People who never want to say no. Never want to lower your expectations? Maybe it speaks to what a worse case scenario kinda gal I am, but I’m always much happier to have someone say to me: “No, sorry this phone will not get you on TV and in fact, the battery will wear down quickly if you take a lot of photos, but it takes awesome photos and it’s got a really easy to use interface.” Or some such thing.

Anyway, long story short, I found myself in a meeting a while ago talking about technical specifications and one of the parties at the meeting kept saying “Yes!” to everything my client asked for, which is great… except that it makes me kinda nervous. I’ve yet to really meet/use any technology that really did EVERYTHING well, and I prefer to know what hiccups or limitations are going to be there from the outset. We like to think of this as expectation management, aka making sure our clients know what they’re going to get and what they’re not going to get so that they’re not disappointed or frustrated when we’ve completed our job. And try as I may, I just can’t make peace with the idea that you can always please everyone all the time.