First Impressions Set the Stage

My clients and I sat across from each other in stunned silence, gazing in horror at what lay before us. No, it wasn’t a notice that the IRS was coming to visit. But close.

It was a timeline document prepared for us by our newly hired, and I must add, well compensated, project consultants. It was poorly laid out, badly aligned, skimpy on details, and had a number of unexplained big gaps between events. It contained typos—further evidence that no one bothered to review it before sending it off to us.

This was the very first deliverable we received from this vendor, a vendor we had chosen after a long and careful process of scrutinizing proposals from many candidates and conducting interviews with those that rose to the top. We were looking for the best team for a critical project that required the production of high quality reports to be shared with others outside our small group.

And here we were. Here it was. The very first work product we received from them, and it was poorly done. At best, it looked like a first draft.

This was particularly disconcerting to me for two reasons. As a consultant myself, I’ve spent years ensuring I make a great first impression and deliver only the highest quality work…especially the first thing a new client sees.  In addition, since I had been so involved with my client in the selection process and in the decision to hire this vendor, I felt a sense of personal betrayal.

My guess is that most people reading this have had the same experience. You hire a vendor who looks like the perfect match in the proposal and interview process and then leaves you aghast when actual work arrives. How can this be?

In our case, we decided that while we were initially treated as an important prospect that warranted superior service, we must have been turned over to the newest hire to prepare our timeline. And no one reviewed the timeline before it was sent off to us…or perhaps they did! What did this foretell for the work to come?

First impressions stay with you. They set the tone for the relationship going forward. Poor ones take quite a bit of work to overcome.

The first thing you deliver to a new customer had better be perfect, because you’re still being evaluated and judged. If your first work is performed at the high level promised, your client will feel confident and comfortable in all of the work to come. If your work is deemed inadequate, trust is lost. Your clients will brace themselves for the next disappointment.

Of course you can recover from a bad first impression and you may even wind up producing amazing work that wows everyone, but why set yourself up to need to recover when with the right start you can save yourself the effort. For many, there’s the time, effort, and money to repair something done poorly but not the time, effort and money to do it right the first time…which always winds up being the right thing to do.