Entrepreneurs have more pressure on them than just about any other type of professional. They are wearing multiple hats, doing whatever needs to be done. They face the numbers' awful truth, every day. They get no days off. Employees and their families are looking to them for their livelihoods. It's no wonder that so many are depressed.
Sometimes, when problems arise, you grab the duct tape and chicken wire and do what you can until you can put a better solution in place. And sometimes that fails, and you make a mistake. So what do you do when that happens?
Your instinct may be to draw from your sales and VC pitching persona, the one that declares a hurricane a perfect, albeit slightly breezy day (I mean, look at that sunshine there in the eye!). If it's the customer's house that's getting knocked over by the winds though, I guarantee you won't fool them. Instead, I recommend a different approach -- honesty.
When you make a mistake, the old apology formula applies:
- Apologize for the problem caused.
- Acknowledge what you did to cause the problem.
- State what measures you'll take to make it right in the future.
Customers are often in the same boat as you, and they get that bad things happen. What they want to know is that:
- You're aware that there was a problem.
- You care about making it right.
- You have a plan to make it right.
There's a fourth addition to the above formula that gets forgotten in our desire to apologize and reconcile:
- Promise only what you can deliver.
This doesn't mean that you should be hyper-cautious or unambitious. Entrepreneurship demands courage and stretching to reach goals. It just means that you should set a target that you will hit. Customers can forgive an occasional missed date or a moved goal. However, if you promise a fix for the error on Monday, and it takes you two weeks, the customer will remember that more strongly than the original mistake. In the end, the market will hold you accountable.
Move boldly, take chances. And when you make mistakes, admit it. Your customers will respect you more for it.
PS: Here are some things you can think about to reduce the number of mistakes you make:
- Treat Your Business Like A Business: Managing Early-Stage Startups
- Is Your SaaS Business A Flytrap or a Lion?
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