If you are a team member, independent consultant, project manager or own a large firm, it’s important to deliver based on your client’s expectations, which includes fulfilling your part of an agreement within the agreed deadline. However, failure to meet established deadlines can lead to a bad business reputation. Hence, for your clients to come back for your services in business, you have to develop the habit of meeting deadlines. Meeting deadlines solidifies the trust a client has in an individual or company. It is advisable to deliver on time, in order not to give your clients a negative experience.
No matter how small or large your business is, it’s necessary to meet its deadlines because most of the time, it leads to the continued success of businesses. Meeting deadlines is a major technique in ensuring that those who employ you or keep your company in business are satisfied and happy. Imbibing the culture of timeliness plays a vital role professional development and keeping the links in your business strong.
One of the methods of keeping clients happy is by attending to their needs on time and not delaying them. However, we came up with 10 ways you can meet deadlines and retain your happy clients.
- First on our list is boosting the motivation level of your employees. If you have unmotivated staff, your chances of getting the job done on time is very slim. For example if you owe your staff one or two salaries, don’t expect them to be regular at work or put all their efforts in the activities of your company. Keeping your staff motivated and fulfilled in your company, is a major way of ensuring your company meets its deadlines.
- Not all employees are good at meeting deadlines; there is always a situation where some of them tend to work on the major work towards the deadline, while the others rather start their own part of the work earlier. To ensure deadlines are met, during duty assignment, managers should look at creating teams that consist of employees with similar approach to work. This will avoid conflicting ideas and further delays.
- Mastering the competency of meeting deadlines is possible, all you need to do is to have a plan, stop making excuses except for critical ones and be true to yourself. Lack of planning can prolong a project and promote failure to meet deadlines, its best to always have a plan when given a project to handle. Making excuses for your inability to meet a deadline does not make you intelligent but adds to your negative track record in meeting deadlines. If you know you need more time to handle a particular project, inform your client earlier so they can restrict their expectations.
- Learn how to refuse a job if you have a lot on your table. Deadlines cannot be compromised once agreed on; it’s better to refuse a project or an assignment than to accept it and fail to meet the stipulated deadline. The habit of not meeting deadlines can spoil your reputation or that of your business, so it’s best you know your limits and accept what you can handle without missing deadlines and seeming incompetent. Remember the stress of refusing a job is less than that of snot being able to accomplish the job.
- To work faster and efficiently in order to meet deadlines, as a leader or employee you can never go wrong by asking for help or delegating responsibilities. There are others who can do the same job that gives you a hard time, faster and with ease.
- Endeavour to always hold yourself accountable for any given job, as it is your duty to ensure that job is done efficiently and finished on time. Being accountable involves putting extra hours, which should not be a problem as long as you get the job done before the deadline.
- Having a good idea of what the job entails and the timeframe for what you are expected to do is very important in meeting deadlines. Ensure you have a deadline schedule and a self written book that correctly explains what each project is about.
- If you are in a team working on a given project, take out time to ensure that everyone in the team is aware of the deadline and are also working in line with the set out plan in completing the project.
- It’s not easy to be ahead of schedule especially if you have a lot of work to do, but it is best to work in advance when given a project, as this gives you plenty of time to complete it and move on to other projects in line. Oftentimes your project may not flow according to plan, so it’s better to create more time for yourself in case of any setbacks.
- Lastly, don’t be too overwhelmed by the remarkable fee awarded for a project, so be careful and don’t over commit yourself to anything you know you can’t handle. Over committing is a major factor that contributes to failure to meet deadlines. Always be aware of your opportunities and limits; also make it known before commencing any project.
In addition for success and development, it’s important to make sure that you can deliver on time what you have promised to deliver. Though there are other ways to meet deadlines, these are effective ways we came up with and we hope they would be useful to you at any stage of your career.
photo credit; caaconference.org
