Top Tips to Hit Client Deadlines
Waking up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night worrying that you’re not going to meet your client deadlines? Wish you’d planned everything a little bit more precisely?
To paint a picture: it’s the first day of a new campaign or the day after a client has challenged you with various task. Your to-do list is getting longer and longer and no matter how much you try to cross jobs off your list, they never seem to end.
Meeting client deadlines is a vital element of success for any organisation. The hard part is getting there, and this can be tricky especially when juggling many accounts.
The big question is… How do you ensure that deadlines are met, and team member and clients are satisfied?
Here are our top tips for success.
Clear Communication
Communication is essential between you, your clients and your colleagues. Making sure everyone involved is on the same page and aware of everything that is going on helps build confidence and transparency. A good start is to ensure your team and client know when projects or task can be and should be completed.
A great communication tool is to use a project management system; there are many out there to choose from. This helps you with organising and prioritising projects on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.
Prioritising and having a timeline is vital. This is one of the key points you should discuss with your client at the start of the project. It is important that you work with your team to establish internal deadlines and make sure these deadlines are achievable within the timeframe. You don’t want to over-extend yourself which could have a detrimental effect on the quality of produced work, the relationship with your client and your team.
There can be unforeseen setbacks too, such as a delay with customer feedback, illness or other external factors. A contingency plan should always be built in to make sure that you can account for delays in the project timeline so that it doesn’t impact deadlines. Liaising early with your client can help resolve any such issues and create the opportunity to evaluate schedules and deadlines.
Avoid Over-promising and Under-delivering
One thing you must avoid at all costs is over-promising and under-delivering on what you can offer a client. This can break the trust that your customer has with you and affect your overall reputation, which you obviously don’t want to happen!
Understand how long it will take your team to complete a task and keep an eye processes to see if there us a way to improve efficiency. Task management will come with experience, and on future projects you will be able to streamline and do things faster. As an example, if it takes three hours on average to complete an article, don’t cut yourself short when planning timescales.
Some good practice to live by when delivering projects is to try to ensure that they completed early. If you can maybe set a deadline a few days later to make sure you have time for amends and possible unforeseen circumstances. If you can deliver a project early, this is a win-win for everyone.
Be Flexible
Sometimes, meeting deadlines requires a bit of flexibility. For example, if a client has an immediate or more timely need, you may need to re-evaluate and adjust lower-priority tasks.
In addition, realise what factors are in your control. You may experience situations where deadlines need to be adjusted based on the client, technology issues or limited resources. But, as stated earlier, remember to be transparent and communicate the change to your team and client to eliminate confusion and false expectations.
Learn from Your Mistakes
Everyone makes mistakes and no one is perfect. No matter how small or how big a mistake is, go back to the drawing board and evaluate what exactly went wrong and discuss ways to prevent this happening again in the future. Take missed deadlines as an opportunity to improve and work out how you can better your communication and time management skills. Here a few pointers that you can ask yourself when evaluating a task:
- What prevented me from delivering it on time?
- Were there any external factors?
- Was there a particular part of the project that has been delivered consistently late?
- Was there any miscommunication? Between you and you your client or internally?
- Did I under forecast the amount of time it would take to complete this project?
- What steps can I take next time to ensure deadlines are met?
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