By Now now now.
I reckon that’s the mantra for the 21st century.
Everything has to be done instantly, or if possible, yesterday, and I blame it on the insane amounts of methods to instantly communicate with other people.
My mum is a perfect example, she’s hooked on her iPhone or iPad.
As soon as an alert pings up, she has to read it, and then reply to it. If an alert doesn’t ping up, then she has to check her Facebook in case there’ve been updates, which unsurprisingly there always has.
It’s the modern disease.
And I’m not totally free of it. I try my best to not do it, I turn off alerts, but sometimes my willpower lets me down and I check things anyway.
This WILL affect you in your business.
Because your clients and customers will expect everything to be done yesterday.
Take, as an example, one of my websites. I was checking the support desk, and there was an email from someone at 13:03, 13:08, 13:15 and 13:25.
He was having difficulty logging into his members area after he’d bought a product. The first email was asking why his login details hadn’t arrived, and was sent less than a minute after he’d purchased.
The next email was saying his login details didn’t work, the third email was asking why we hadn’t replied, and the last one was claiming we were scamming him and had ripped him off because we weren’t answering his emails.
I mean WTF?!
His email actually didn’t get answered until nearly 14:00, when the support team got to it. But I consider having a support request answered in an hour pretty impressive.
This kind of expectation only exists online, you wouldn’t order a sofa and then ask why it hadn’t been delivered in the next minute, or go in to a restaurant, order your meal, and then complain when it hadn’t arrived five minutes later.
But because it affects your clients and customers, it’s gonna affect you as well. Which means you have to set expectations.
Everything you do online is about expectations.
When someone joins your mailing list, you should set the expectations of how and when you’re going to send emails, and what they’ll be about. When someone contacts your support, you should send an automatic email setting expectations of when they’re likely to hear back from you. If you’re selling a product, you should set the expectations of what’s going to be inside of it.
And once you’ve set those expectations, stick to them.
Don’t tell your readers you’ll send emails every day, and then send one a week. Don’t tell your customers you’ll reply within 24 hours, and then consistently don’t, but also don’t tell them you’ll replies usually take 2-3 hours, and then reply in 5 minutes.
Why?
Because they’ll expect that next time.
Set your expectations and stick to them.
My expectation is that you want to learn how to make money online, how to afford a lifestyle where your time is yours to manage, and that you’re prepared to take action and put in some work to get there.
And if I’ve got you pegged as the person I think you are, then you’re probably already registered on my early bird list for Business Ignition.
But if you’re not, then you can slap your wrists and go register here.
https://michaelwilding.com/mw-early-bird/
Michael
What do you think?