Vita's Tip in 10: Why You Should Stop Apologizing For Your Lead Times

Hello, hello, friend! Welcome to a new episode of Vita’s Tip In Ten. Today’s tip is inspired by a recent personal experience I had, that reminded me of a challenge I have with my team. 

I had an interesting experience the other day. I met with a contractor at my home because I needed to have a fence put in around my backyard. The fence specialist was lovely, she was really knowledgeable and gave a great first impression. She came over and we walked around, I explained to her what we wanted and I gave her all of my specs.  

We had a nice normal conversation that you would have with someone that you would want to get an estimate from, and I felt really good about working with her company. And before she left, I said “Okay, can you please let me know, what are the next steps? What is the lead time? How long is it going to take?” Not in a demanding, I expect it tomorrow way, just for my own clarity. 

And she said, “I will be putting together the estimate…the only thing is, I probably won't be able to send it over to you until Monday. It’s Thursday, and we are a little swamped right now, plus this is a holiday weekend. And I'm just not sure how fast I can get all the calls from the from the vendors. So I will get back to you as soon as possible, but it probably won't be until Monday.” 

And - to use our fearless leader LuAnn’s terms – my outside voice said “yeah, sure that sounds great.” But my inside voice was saying, “Why on earth does she sound so apologetic about it?!” We're just meeting on Thursday. Tomorrow is Good Friday, then it's the weekend. Then it's Monday, and even if it wasn't Good Friday, and even if it wasn't the weekend, in my mind a couple of days to receive an estimate is completely acceptable. And even if it wasn't acceptable, even if I thought that it should be done sooner, I was a bit put-off by her tone of voice and the way she said it in a sort of meek-ish and apologetic way.  

It set up an atmosphere of “Oh something is wrong, something is off.” The apologetic tone made me feel like she actually had something to be sorry for, that she is not doing as good a job as maybe she should be or could be. It just did not feel good or right or positive or polished, on point and according to process. It made me feel as though something was wrong before we even got started. 

What I would have loved for her to say was, “Today is Thursday, I will be working on your estimate for the next couple of days and I will get it over to you on Monday. How does that sound?” I would have wanted her to be sure of her process and to be confident in delivering it. And then at the end, confirm with me to make sure that I understood.  

And it reminded me that I also see this very occurrence of preemptive apologetic behavior within my own team. It especially comes up when scheduling appointments. Sometimes when our designers reach out and say, “Hey, I would love to have an appointment for customer Smith. What is your availability?” Or the designer would say, “I would love to meet with you next Tuesday at 10am.  Are you available?” Inevitably, when the specific date requested is not available, what I see sometimes is my team members become apologetic about it. And so the response then is, “I'm so sorry. I can't do it on that day. I am booked, or we're really busy, etc.” And like my experience with the fence company, what that remorseful response does is give the impression of you are doing something wrong, that you aren’t owning your process and service you provide. 

So instead, what I want them to say and I am training them to say is, “Next Tuesday at 10 is challenging for me. I can meet with you the following Tuesday at 3pm, or next Thursday at 10am or the following Wednesday at 1pm.  Which one would you prefer?” So there's no being sorry, there are no regrets for your workload or what for what you have going on. There should not be guilt associated with the fact that your calendars just happened to not match. It is just a simple and very neutral fact that the potential client’s availability and your availability did not quite match on the first try. There's nothing bad about it. There's nothing negative about it. You just share your availability matter-of-factly and find a date and time that works for both of you. 

What it feels like to me whenever we get into this apologetic behavior, is that it subconsciously sends a message to our prospective customer, that our process is not strong enough and that we as individuals and professionals are not strong enough to “stand in our in our space” as Sandra Funk would say. Instead, the constant message that we need to send out there and to put out into the universe is that we have an established process. This process is robust and it works.  We are not apologizing for it one bit, because it has been tested and it has withstood the test of time. And the test of many, many customers and this is how we do things. This is not arrogant and it’s not about being full of ourselves, it’s just that there is no need for self-imposed guilt and apologies in a situation where you have done nothing wrong. 

So my tip for you today, my friend, is that when you catch yourself feeling compunction over your schedule or process and have the urge to apologize – stop!  Just stop.  Confidently quote your availability or timeline. The same goes for your pricing.  The same goes for your lead time for installation.  I promise, the impression it leaves on your customer will be more well received and they will feel assured in their decision to work with you. 

Thank you so much for listening today! I really hope you enjoyed today’s tip, and that you’re looking forward to becoming more aware of this in your customer interactions. 

If you are looking for more tips just like this; if you’re looking for exact communication templates; if you are looking for ALL the systems to run your business like a well-oiled machine – I invite you to check out my VIP experience.  It is a 2-day in-person intensive, where you’re treated like royalty and where you get the back-stage pass to ALL the back-end operations of my business. 

And in the meantime, I’ll be looking forward to bringing you a new episode of Vita’s Tip in Ten next Thursday. See you next time!