Customer Experience Library - Tip #11 Point out the Flaws in Your Work
- Mark O'Brien
- Jul 19, 2024
- 2 min read
This post may be counterintuitive to many sales and marketing professionals, but it’s a core part of what builds human connection.
There is nothing wrong with hyping your product and itemizing all the Features, Advantages, and Benefits of how your product compares to others. Make sure you clearly communicate what it does well! You should care about what you provide and be excited to share it’s benefits – if not, you’re in the wrong business.
But in all things, balance.
And it’s nothing new, but be sure to also honestly identify the flaws in your perspective.
Nothing new about honestly leading to TRUST.
But it truly can be small business rocket fuel.
When I was in the exterior home cleaning business, I ALWAYS told customers upon finishing up what went well, and more importantly what went poorly. I would find the tiniest detail of something that might not have been perfect, and I made sure to share it with them.
What did this practice do?
It showed each customer that I was upfront about admitting my mistakes and flaws. This built a tremendous amount of TRUST and the referrals flew in. Never did I receive a question or an issue about small details that didn’t go exactly right, on the contrary, I heard, “That’s perfectly fine, it looks AMAZING,” constantly...
Similarly in the sales process for software products, after clearly demonstrating the core functionality, I usually would point out the flaws in my product, “now our product wasn’t originally designed to do this additional feature, is there anything else you wish our tools accomplished for you?”
Most of the time, that led a tremendous amount of trust being built in the relationship (not to mention building out my product roadmap), and whether we served that customer or not, my counterpart always knew I would give them an honest perspective in our area of expertise.
That’s how you build a long-term and successful book of business.
Nothing new about honesty, just a foundational truth for word of mouth growth.
“Where TRUST is HIGH, goods will FLY, Where TRUST is LOW, goods won’t Go.”
-Bobby Black, economist and professor, Houghton College
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