I recently read Pragmatic Thinking and Learning and one of my favorite portions from the book is where they mention that perception is most greatly influenced by prediction.

This seems to be a little important to a sales guy no?

One of my favorite sayings is that it is far better to under-promise and over-deliver than the other way around. So if you can set expectations up front, the Client’s perception of your product will be based off of their predictions. This is the biggest reason why no one in sales should ever say “Oh yeah that looks easy!” That immediately colors the Client’s expectations towards the “Then why is it so damn expensive?” Now I’m not saying that you should tell everyone that everything you do requires a herculean effort, but be careful to help manage expectations as you are going through the sales process and throughout the product’s life.

At a certain point you’ll be tempted to sandbag your estimates and your proposals to allow you and your team to be the hero when you come in under budget, under time, and with everything they expect. Fight this temptation. This will only end up with you losing deals, and burning clients as your estimates climb and you get complacent. Be honest with your clients without overselling yourself and you’ll find that if you can successfully manage their expectations, you’ll have happier clients and more business.

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