And one

We’ve all heard about the importance of overdelivering for your clients. But that term is so abstract and all-encompassing that it can be hard to put into practice in a practical way day-in and day-out.

But recently I stumbled on a simple method for consistently overdelivering that I’m calling the “and one” system.

The idea comes from basketball… When a player scores and gets fouled in the process, they get the two points from scoring and one from their free throw. It’s like a bonus point.

Except, in basketball, the phrase “and one” is typically shouted aggressively as you taunt your opponent — here, the idea is to remind me to add a little more value by going one step further.

Let me give you a couple recent examples…

A client wrote me because they were worried their receptionist wasn’t receiving all the inquiries from their website. He requested that I CC him on all the form submissions just to be sure.

So, I fulfilled that request — but, while I was at it, I also exported a spreadsheet of all their form submissions so he could go through and ensure no one was forgotten.

He didn’t ask me to do that, but it was an easy way to fulfill request and make it just a bit better than he asked for.

As you can imagine, he was very appreciative — and it took me almost no additional time.

Or, when I did a video recently showing off the new GeneratePress template I created, I put a link in the video description where people could download the Figma file in case they wanted to play around with that too.

It didn’t take much extra work for me — I already had the Figma file — but it was a nice little bonus that doesn’t usually come with website templates.

What I like about this “and one” system is that it’s so easy to tack-on to just about any request. It’s a way to overdeliver in a practical way.

All I nee to do is ask myself “What would make this just a little bit better?” or “If I was doing this for myself, what else would I want?”.

Often, clients don’t know what’s possible — but, because I do, I can easily impress them by giving them just a little bit more than they asked for.

Because I’ve developed a simple system (and a name, which is strangely helpful in remembering to use it), including these “and one” bonuses has become almost second nature.

And these little acts of kindness can go a long way in strengthening client relationships and demonstrating expertise.

I’d encourage you to give it a try!