Why are you over delivering?
It’s a problem a lot of entrepreneurs have. I’m in a network with 40 odd women on their way to the tops of their respective fields – and several times now we’ve spoken about how overdelivering can be such a massive problem.
You agree to do a job for a client, but then they ask for a little bit more, they start emailing you at odd times and expect almost instant responses. Or you do the project, but add in so many little extra, you go the extra mile. You add a few extra hours onto the agreed timetable.
But why do we do it?
There is a saying in business to under promise and over deliver, to do the opposite would be almost business suicide. But can we over deliver too much. We compromise our own sanity, our own time with our family, sacrifice time we could be spending working on our own businesses. And instead of growing our businesses we’re busy growing there’s.
I get this – I call it vomiting all over your client – it’s not a pretty image. One lady in the network likened it to orgasming too early! Whatever works for you! But it’s worth while thinking about why we do it.
I learned a hard lesson early on as a business coach, and the foolhardiness of overdelivering. I had a client who I was a little bit in awe of. She was well respected, with years of business experience behind her belt and she wanted me to support her to create a marketing plan.
In that first session in my desire to prove to her I was worthy of the money she was paying me, I gave her everything. I literally tried to cram in everything I new about digital and marketing. To prove I was worth it. I literally vomited everything I knew over her in that two hours.
She left dazed and confused.
And then left me a not so great review – my first ever non 5-star review. I was heartbroken. I’d given her everything, I was confused.
So I contacted her and she told me the session was terrible. In my haste to prove my worth, I had totally confused her, I gave her too much information. She didn’t want it all, she wanted enough to get started with, she wanted to dip her toe in the ocean.
It was such amazing feedback. She came back and ended up working with me over the next 4 months as we calmly created a strategy for her.
So I wonder if our need to over deliver to prove our worth, comes from a fear that we’re not good enough. That they will find you out and discover that you don’t really know your onions.
So whether your designing them a new branding suite of tools, coaching or delivering training. Hold something back. Don’t feel you need to give them anything. If you’ve said you’ll devote 10 hours a month to a client – hold to that, and at the start of that relationship let them know that if you go over there will be additional cost and that you’ll let them know about that if you get there.
You don’t need to prove your worth. They are already paying you. They are already invested in you. They already think you are fabulous.
You just need to believe that too x
If this resonated with you and you know it's a problem you'd like to redress find out how we can work together to support you to build up your sense of worth, create stronger boundaries and starting working on your business: https://debbiedooodah.co.uk/business-coach
