On a daily basis, there are many distractions that are part of running a business. An employee shows up late—once again—without calling in. The supplier has no record of your order, even though you do, and you need the materials right now. A client remembers having told the salesperson something, but the salesperson doesn't remember it.

Success depends on the transfer of information between the appropriate people at the right time. Particularly when working with clients, it is imperative to be on the same page. How do you make that occur more often than not?

Document Every Conversation
You need to tell a client (or supplier, etc.) something. You call them. Maybe you even connect with them instead of leaving a message.

Write them an email recapping the call, stating what the issue is, why it occurred, by when it will be resolved, who is responsible, and if it is a cost issue.

You might not need to cover all those items, depending on the issue that's being addressed. But for the sake of clarity, I suggest you lay out any email you write in this manner.

Why? It avoids mutual mystification, which is when two parties to a conversation each walk away with a different idea of what was agreed to.

Set a Date By When
Always set a date by when you will next be talking with, meeting with, or communicating with the person you are conversing with before the end of the current interaction.

Leaving it open-ended generally ends up with at least one of the parties wondering if they should have heard from the other by now. You want to avoid this occurring because it deteriorates the other person's confidence in you and creates catch-up and recovery work you now need to do.

When you set the date, put it in your calendar. If there is needed research, etc., to find the information you said you would be providing, set an earlier date by when you will start the research. If you don't set those dates, you are depending on your memory, which is dangerous to a business.

It's dangerous because credibility and the desire to refer a business is built on follow-through, not excuses.

Always Communicate By the Date You Set
Often what happens in the fast pace of most businesses is that everyone is "busy," often to the extreme.

What happens in that environment is the crisis of the day gets focused on, not the communication commitments which were made days or weeks or months ago.

What happens in the mind of a client when you don't get back to them by the date you set in your last interaction?

The client starts wondering if they have become less important than they had been. That you must be out chasing other projects or taking care of issues for other clients.

They never assume good things. I cannot stress that enough.

Therefore, even if you have bad or incomplete or no information, call them on the date you said you would. Tell them what has been done. Update them, particularly regarding by when you will be back to them with the information or, at the very least, just to keep them informed of the current status regarding the issue.

What Do You Want When You Are the Client?
All I am suggesting is that you treat your clients and those you work with the way you want to be treated.

I bet you want to get a call on the date you were told it would occur, right? And if you don't get the call, what happens? You start worrying.

The thing about dependability is that its foundation is all these little things, like following through on your commitments by when you said you would.

Model that behavior in your company and watch your repeat and referral business increase while your profits do as well.