I recently had the honor of having lunch with the very nice Alex Pachikov, VP of Business Development of Evernote at Mountain View. Apart of being a very good host (we had great office burritos, and i left with a bunch load of Evernote goodies), he very kindly offered me a piece of advice from his many years of business development work, and i quote:

“Keep to your promises.”

At first glance this might sound simple, but the message behind is mighty powerful. Essentially all relationships are based on trust, regardless if it’s personal or professional relationships. Trust is the foundation on which all relationships are built.

In today’s competitive business reality sometimes (a lot of times, in fact) it is very tempting to act and sound bigger than you actually are. You WILL feel pressured, compelled to make vague promises to get that extra step ahead.

“Yes it will be delivered next week.” “Yes we have 100 customers.” “Yes our service works 99.99% of the time.”

Do those promises sound familiar? Problem is most, if not all are smokes and mirrors at best.

Now imagine if you are the receiving end of those promises, and how do you feel when they are not delivered? Not too good, i assume.

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Now here is the big idea:

It is OKAY to make promises. It is OKAY to make pre-mature promises sometimes. It is OKAY to catch-up with your promises so that you can deliver them ON TIME when you do.

Just make sure you keep to your promises, and have the courage to apologize when you can’t. The failure of projects will not cause the failure of relationships; the failure of relationships WILL cause the failure of projects.

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Best lunch advice i’ve ever gotten. Yet.