Real-Life Decision Making -- Solution
You accept the job and call in extra help to get it done.
Although tired and short-staffed, you step up to the challenge. You network
with business colleagues to find the most reliable contract workers so you
can outsource much of the job to them and have them work in round-the-clock
shifts to get all the data entered to the customer's specifications.
Upon completion of the job, Cooper and Sons is overwhelmed by your professionalism
and "take charge" attitude. Within a month, you land a more profitable and
less deadline-heavy assignment. A year later, you sign on with Cooper and
Sons to provide permanent support for their database needs. You open additional
offices in your city to meet the demand for your services.
Meeting client needs regardless of the time frame is a decision
Jeannette Marshall always chooses to make. Why? Because it's simply good business
and also raises her company's reliability factor in her community.
Clients can be choosy and they can call at the last minute to ask you to
do the near-impossible thing. Often, they also change their minds mid-stream
once you've started the job, says Marshall.
For example, one customer decided he wanted first names to come before
last names -- and he wanted middle initials deleted from the database. Instead
of the name reading "Jones, Robert R.," the customer decided he wanted it
to read, "Robert Jones." Marshall was already in the middle of the job, and
she had to go back and spend extra time deleting middle initials and reformatting
the database according to her client's expectations.
Still, extra time in such a case is well spent. "Customers want a little
something extra, and you can't get a [bad] attitude about it," she says. "Spend
the extra time you need to get the job done right."