The Power of Under-Promising & Over-Delivering

Your most strategic tip!

In a world obsessed with ambitious goals, aggressive targets, and bold sales projections, telling someone “never promise what you cannot deliver” may seem almost counterintuitive. But after 22 years of coaching senior business aircraft sales professionals - working at OEMs and brokerage - I’ve seen first-hand how this principle, when truly understood and applied, becomes a differentiator, not a limitation.

Here’s why that advice is so important, and how it underpins sustainable success in high-stakes sales.

Integrity Is the Foundation of Trust

At its core, business aviation is a trust-based, relationship-driven enterprise. You're not selling a commodity or a one-time transaction - you’re selling confidence, service, and often, a long-term relationship. When a client asks, “Can you deliver this custom spec, this timeline, or this performance guarantee?” they are placing faith in your word.

If you over promise and under deliver - even once - that breach erodes trust faster than almost any other misstep. Reputation, especially in tight-knit circles of ultra-high-net-worth individuals (UHNWIs), is fragile. A single broken promise can ripple through networks, undermining your credibility and diminishing future opportunities.

Why The temptation to Overpromise Is So Strong

There are several pressures in high-value sales that tempt even experienced professionals to promise more than they can confidently deliver:

• Sales targets and quotas: The pressure to hit numbers can lead to optimistic commitments rather than realistic ones.

• Competitive intensity: In high-stakes scenarios, promising more than competitors may appear necessary to “win the deal.”

• Client expectations: Clients accustomed to hearing bold guarantees may implicitly prompt you to match or exceed them.

• Emotional momentum: In the heat of negotiation, you may be swept up in optimism and feel that “just a little stretched promise” is harmless. But every stretched promise carries risk—especially when dealing with customised, regulated, and complex products like business aircraft.

How Under-Promising Protects You (and Enables You to Over-Deliver)

When you don’t promise what you can’t deliver, you give yourself the margin of safety to exceed expectations. Here’s how that works in practice:

• Define the baseline carefully - Before making commitments, do your homework. Understand regulatory constraints, maintenance cycles, certification timelines, and logistical dependencies. You can then promise only what your analysis supports.

• Build in buffers - Whether it's delivery schedules, flight hours, or customisation lead times—include realistic buffer margins. If you commit to “90 days,” building in a 10–20% buffer gives you space to absorb hiccups.

• Communicate transparently - Be explicit about what is certain versus what is aspirational. Use phrases like “based on current assumptions” or “contingent on supplier performance.” This sets the stage, so deviations don’t come as surprises.

• Focus on “must-haves” first, Prioritise core deliverables - safety, regulatory compliance, performance. If additional features or enhancements are possible, frame them as “nice-to-haves” or options contingent on resources.

• Strategically over-deliver - Once baseline promises are confident, look for small ways to surprise and delight the client - earlier delivery of a minor feature, enhanced satisfaction service, additional briefing, or value-add support. Those become memorable differentiators.

  
  

Real-World Risks When You Fail This Principle

Here are some of the real dangers I’ve seen when sales professionals stray from this advice:

• Promising extra features without reserve can lead to cost overruns, quality compromise, or schedule slippage.

• Client dissatisfaction & erosion of trust. What starts as a small delay or omission often becomes a reputational stain - clients may question your reliability on every future commitment.

• Internal moral hazard. Once promises are past the line of feasibility, teams are pushed into desperate workarounds, corners get cut, and pressure builds. That undermines culture and can lead to burnout or failures.

• Cascading opportunity cost. Time and resources wasted on trying to “rescue” overpromised commitments distract from other deals, and can erode your attention on better priority opportunities.

Advice for Those I Haven’t Yet Worked With

If I were giving that same tip to someone I haven’t coached yet, here’s how I’d flesh it out in counsel:

• Before you bid or promise, map dependencies - supply chains, certification, regional regulators, support teams.

• Use “anchoring language”: Instead of saying “We will deliver X in 90 days,” say “We anticipate X in 90 days, assuming [factors].”

• Train negotiation teams to qualify promises: “Yes, we can do that - if you are okay with adjusting Y or allowing a buffer on Z.”

• Maintain a promise register: Track commitments made internally and externally; revisit and renegotiate if conditions change.

• Sales leaders - reward integrity in your sales culture: celebrate the deals where minimal promises were kept and exceeded, not just the biggest wins.

The Legacy of a Single Tip

In 22 years coaching in business aviation, I’ve watched stars rise and fall. Some of the most gifted sellers failed not through lack of ambition, but because they overpromised one too many times. The ones who lasted, and sustained reputations, were often the quieter ones who delivered reliably day after day.

So yes - if someone asked me today for the single piece of advice I’d offer: never promise what you cannot deliver. Not because ambition is bad, but because trust is everything - and trust is built one kept promise at a time.