Good morning and welcome back everybody!
I start immediately with a question: a potential client gives you an important order, asking you however to produce and deliver it by exactly half the time you need. What do you do?
I’m asking you this question because just before the summer closure, MICROingranaggi experienced a similar situation. We were contacted by a company for a very interesting job which we had to turn down because the requested delivery date was too tight in order to be able to execute and complete the work. A real pity, for sure.
The fact is that this type of situations is fairly frequent and, sometimes, making inconvenient decisions – like in this case turning down an interesting order – becomes a necessity.
People forget how fast you did a job, but they remember how well you did it…
… stated Howard W. Newton. In my opinion, this is an essential consideration.
I believe that it’s not worthwhile doing a poor job in order to simply meet the client’s deadlines that, based on our experience, are excessively tight. Not even to take an extra order in a period of crisis. I think it’s better to turn down the job – even regretfully.
The alternative – implemented unfortunately by some companies – is to accept the requested deadlines, knowing they won’t be respected. And to “run into delays” while executing the job (and perhaps with some lame excuse), thus bringing the delivery date to the actual forecasted date, despite the client’s will. In my opinion, this strategy is not honest.
The other key matter – and I’m referring above all to the sector of precision micro-mechanics that I obviously know well- is that
most of the times, the terms “well” and “fast” cannot co-exist in the same sentence: indeed, time is required to do a good job, which should be established by people boasting experience and skills in the field.
Therefore, if I was a client, I would doubt those companies that promise good jobs with quick turnarounds. Regardless of the size of the company being contacted. Indeed, a larger and structured company should have a proportionate clientele according to logic, therefore deadlines should always be correlated…
