Most business people that I know prefer to underpromise and overdeliver.  I think we have all met the people that take the opposite tact and we have learned to not trust their promises because they make tall claims that never materialize.  When we exceed expectations of our customers, superiors and colleagues, those around us learn to count on us to get the job done and get the job done with excellence.

Of course there is a limit to underpromising.  The person that consistently underpromises and substantially exceeds each deliverable can earn the reputation of "sandbagger".  When that happens, people come to expect more than is said and that can also have damaging implications.

So, what is a conservative business person to do?  In my experience, business people generally feel good when they consistenly beat expectations by a little amount.  Sometimes, the expectations will be far exceeded and sometimes they will be slightly missed, but on the whole, a business person that aims for a good reputation with customers, peers and superiors aims to beat expectations by a little amount each and every time.

In a partner context, I think the same logic can hold true.  The challenge is that information is not always as freely communicated since there is an indirect relationship and the flow of information and communication relies on a more subjective route.  For instance, sales pipeline reports are not usually as clean in a channel partner relationship as they are in a direct sales relationship.  In that case, if both sides of the channel partner relationship (vendor and reseller) don't work very hard to establish clear expectations of a sales pipeline, there is a good chance that both will have different understanding of the exectations around future sales.

These kinds of administrative tasks can cause an undue burden on all parties and certainly can cause sales opportunities to be lost if not careful.  After all, a typical reseller is not able to produce a customized sales pipeline for every vendor whose product it takes to market.  There would be no time to sell anything.

Open communication and review of the pipeline is often best.  Of course, that requires trust, and there we are back to that issue once again.  Do you have suggestions of how to better handle expectation setting between vendor and partner, particularly with sales pipelines?

William Vanderbilt

+1 630 343 6261

WVanderbilt@InnovativeLearningChannels.com