Wednesday, March 30, 2011

"Thank you for pointing out my mistake"

Kelley Robertson is a sales trainer and the author of the "Fearless Selling" blog. This story of his discusses making a mistake... and how to deal with the results.

A little while ago I wrote a blog post and referred to the decision maker as a male and the executive assistant as female. Of course, this mistake stereotyped the positions. Big blunder!
Needless to say, I received several comments and emails from people pointing out that this “assumption” was grossly outdated.
I REALLY dislike making mistakes like that especially since I’ve been writing regularly for the better part of fifteen years and I usually take care to avoid fundamental gaffes like this. But stuff like this comes with the territory.
Here’s the lesson.
You’re going to make mistakes with your customers. You will screw up. You may misquote a project. You may under-estimate delivery times. You might suggest the wrong product. But that doesn’t matter.
What matters is how you handle the problem.
The worst thing you can do is to make excuses, try to justify it, or redirect the blame. Suck it up, take responsibility and thank the other person for pointing out your mistake. This can actually help you stand out from your competition and help you increase your sales because companies like to do business with people who are willing to admit mistakes.

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