Don’t Rest Your Promises on the Work of Others

Outsourcing is a beautiful and wonderful thing.  You come up with a great idea, send money to a freelancer, and like magic they send you a completed project.  If you do enough outsourcing, you can get projects from the idea stage to completion in lightning-quick time.

So you find your dream freelancers, go over the details, they give you estimated delivery dates, and you start planning out your marketing.  As the delivery dates near, you check with your freelancers to ensure they are still on track (they are).  Then you start sending out emails to build anticipation for the upcoming launch.

Can you see the problem boiling just under the surface?

The success of the product launch is completely out of your hands.  The freelancers may suddenly disappear, they could become ill, for example, and you won’t know what happened until it’s crunch time. 

It doesn’t matter if you’ve set your launch several days or even a week or more ahead of the date your freelancers told you they’d deliver.  What happens if they can’t deliver?  Now you need to scramble around and find another freelancer (and the good ones aren’t available at the drop of a hat like that), or you need to put in long hours to get it done yourself.

It’s exhausting to say the least.  And that means you might not get everything done before the launch, or you might drop the ball in a few places.  That could easily lower your credibility in the marketplace.

The same goes for your business partners.  Don’t let your success depend on another person, because it’s the customers who suffer if someone doesn’t keep their promises to you (and in turn you can’t keep your promises to your customer).

Your best bet?  Never make promises until you’re actually ready to deliver.  If it’s not already in your hand, don’t promise your customers that you can get it into their hands on a specific date.

Tags: List Building, Product Launch, Customer Service