{"id":684,"date":"2025-05-01T06:45:31","date_gmt":"2025-05-01T11:45:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cmitsolutions.com\/philadelphia-pa-1200\/?p=684"},"modified":"2025-05-01T06:45:31","modified_gmt":"2025-05-01T11:45:31","slug":"trust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cmitsolutions.com\/philadelphia-pa-1200\/blog\/trust\/","title":{"rendered":"The Project Went Cuckoo, But the Client Called Me Anyway"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a service business, the one thing you have<\/em> to establish is trust. Because you can\u2019t be trusted if you\u2019re indistinguishable.<\/span><\/p>\n

What I mean is, if the client doesn\u2019t trust you, you\u2019re just another name on a list of vendors who all say the same thing. In a word, you\u2019re replaceable. And when something goes wrong (which Murphy\u2019s Law says it will) that trust is the only thing keeping the lines of communication open.<\/span><\/p>\n

I had an unusual opportunity to build that trust recently. It wasn\u2019t through what we were hired to do. It was through something I was pretty sure wasn\u2019t my job.<\/span><\/p>\n

How things go a little sideways<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

We were brought in as a small vendor on a large project for a Philadelphia-area company. Other players had the bigger roles \u2013 contractors, electricians, and lots of other guys with large trucks. Our job? Pretty minor. We could have Uber\u2019d to the job site. In the hierarchy of importance, we were hanging out somewhere near the snack table.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the project had one flaw: no one was coordinating. Timelines didn\u2019t align, updates didn\u2019t flow, and eventually, the CEO got frustrated. And when a CEO is frustrated, it doesn\u2019t matter who messed up. It only matters who steps up.<\/span><\/p>\n

At one of the company\u2019s locations, our technician showed up to install a firewall and discovered someone else had already installed one. Surprise!<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s when I realized what was missing: communication. So, I volunteered to fill the gap. (That\u2019s not as selfless as it seems. I can\u2019t have my techs traveling to distant locations for zero work.) I started checking in with the other vendors and sending the CEO a simple weekly update on everyone\u2019s status.<\/span><\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve been in a similar situation, you know I wasn\u2019t trying to win a gold star. I just wanted the project to stop spinning in circles. But the small act of telling the CEO what was happening \u2013 and documenting it with a basic Excel spreadsheet \u2013 completely changed his tone with us. He started trusting us more. Started calling me for updates. In his eyes, I was his point person\u2026 even though we weren\u2019t running the job.<\/span><\/p>\n

Don\u2019t let a client hear crazy cuckoo clocks in their head <\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

So this isn\u2019t a story about building a flashy brand or being the best salesperson. It\u2019s about noticing a vacuum in an inconvenient place and quietly filling it in a way that creates trust with a client you\u2019d like to keep.<\/span><\/p>\n

In this case, trust didn\u2019t come from the technology we were hired to install. It came from being the one vendor who noticed that everyone else was so focused on their part of the project that they forgot to talk to each other. And to the guy at the top.<\/span><\/p>\n

If you’re wondering how to spot opportunities like this, look for the silences in larger projects. When no one\u2019s updating the client, when timelines feel fuzzy, when people start asking the same questions more than once and it\u2019s not clear who might have answers \u2013 that\u2019s your cue. You don\u2019t need to take over the whole project. Just fill one communication gap, offer one clear update, solve one coordination headache.<\/span><\/p>\n

Because trust is built in those small moments when a client realizes, \u201cI can count on you.\u201d<\/em> And in this business, that\u2019s everything.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a service business, the one thing you have to establish is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1039,"featured_media":685,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[26,28],"class_list":["post-684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-it-services-for-the-greater-philadelphia-area","tag-communication","tag-trust"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cmitsolutions.com\/philadelphia-pa-1200\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cmitsolutions.com\/philadelphia-pa-1200\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cmitsolutions.com\/philadelphia-pa-1200\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cmitsolutions.com\/philadelphia-pa-1200\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1039"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cmitsolutions.com\/philadelphia-pa-1200\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cmitsolutions.com\/philadelphia-pa-1200\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cmitsolutions.com\/philadelphia-pa-1200\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cmitsolutions.com\/philadelphia-pa-1200\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cmitsolutions.com\/philadelphia-pa-1200\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cmitsolutions.com\/philadelphia-pa-1200\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}