Why Should You Never Say "Never"?

Even after twenty years of business career (and longer life experience), I still seem to have failed to learn some important things.

One of them is not to say too much.

I often declare things confidently, and I often hear other people say that you may think that clarity is the essential feature of business planning tools.

However, the probability of deviating from the expected development is far greater than the probability of being gradual.

In fact, even those who are very well planned and run very well will rarely advance in the way you imagine.

Some things may be taken for granted today, but if you look back, you will find that your expectations seldom come true in a week, a year or five years ago.

So before you cut the words on the stone, you must think twice.

I see that there are very few "consistent / never" situations encountered by businesses and managers.

"We can always beat any price."

This is obviously the overall sales and marketing plan of some companies. There are some companies -- but I have to say that only a few companies can play the role of the lowest cost supplier.

But for the vast majority of enterprises, especially for small businesses, making bold and clean promises in terms of price may involve themselves in competition.

Unless you really have a secret recipe that allows you to survive all the competitors with price, otherwise it is better to leave room for your statement.

Let it clearly show that you will provide competitive prices, but do not guarantee anything, sell according to your value and service, never fear to lose a customer who can not bring you profits or lose a profitable business.

You should not always be willing to suffer economic losses.

"We are firmly committed to implementing our policies, and there will never be any exceptions."

The reason why I remember this sentence is because I think of the luggage industry, which is closely related to my business.

Over the years, big brands are the main players in the market. They firmly control their distribution channels, fully control their customers' retail prices (always, no discount), stock levels, and any advertising about their brands (even including pictures used on the Internet). Their status is aloof and enviable.

Retailers do not like this, but if they want to play, they have to put up with it.

But over the past few years, these brands have begun to face a series of serious problems.

Now, they will not only offer discounts, but also direct sales on their own websites, breaking the channel policy they once insisted on, and constantly providing discount information to consumers through e-mail.

There is nothing wrong with these practices, which is the way to do business in this era.

But they used to be high above brands. They said a few years ago that all this would never happen.

"The additional clauses in those small print are never important."

This is one of the most common.

Whether software licenses, sales orders, leases or any other contracts, most of us, especially those who are unable to pay high fees for legal advice, will seize the opportunity to disguise what we think is trivial.

This is usually because it is proved to be insignificant until it becomes less "insignificant".

If you sign your name on the signature column if you haven't read the content, then you need to understand the importance and risks that you have signed.

If the worst case is, if you stop your coffee service, you have the obligation to pay for the coffee machine in the rest of the year, so maybe you can afford it.

But if it can drain your wealth or let you be accused of going to court, you may not be careless about these seemingly cliche additional clauses.

"We never need more (or less) space."

My family's previous businesses moved, expanded and / or increased the number of equipment to eight times in fifty years.

It may not seem like much, but every time when we move or expand, we will say, "we will never need more room than here", and then we will reduce the area of renting on this basis.

But every time we discover that we have no place and we have to rent extra space to store goods or do not have enough space to expand, we can only choose expensive and inefficient ways to solve the problem.

Of course, growth is a good problem. We can not predict the future, but the key here is to consider the possibilities.

You can't know what you don't know, but when making major decisions, you should avoid relying solely on assumptions. You should make a backup plan before you press to narrow down the scope of your choice.

We have all heard that it is wise to assume that the time and cost of things will be two times what we expected. In fact, this is also a very good suggestion.

When you do

When setting policies or conducting business negotiations, you usually do not need to be so subjective and assertive. Leave room for yourself and prepare for unexpected events. This does no harm, and allows you to deal with changes more easily and gracefully (you know, some of your sure things will not happen).

Please freely share your own examples of regret after the announcement of self confidence, or the lessons of hard work.

For me, I will never say anything too absolute.

Never!