New Zealand is small. People talk. Your greatest source of new business is a happy buyer. If you win a contract to supply a good or service, make sure you deliver what you said you would deliver, when you said you would deliver it, for the price you said you would deliver it. If you can’t deliver what you have promised, your could lose the contract or worse. More importantly, in a small country, you could damage your reputation, and that could take a long time to repair.

One of the key things you can do to ensure you deliver on your promises is not to overpromise in the first place. It’s easy in a tendering situation to overpromise to get the business, thinking you will sort out the over promise when you win the business. Unless you are 100% certain you can sort the overpromise, don’t do it.