Expectations

The formula that breaks every relationship

Here's the formula I draw for every seller I coach. Two variables:

• What the customer wants from you: the best service, the perfect product, on-time every pour, no surprises, VIP treatment, proactive communication.
• What the customer wants to pay: the lowest price available on the market.

Most contractors want to operate at the intersection of those two. They want the steakhouse experience at Sizzler prices. They want to drink the champagne on a beer budget.

That doesn't exist. Not in my industry. Not in any industry. The customer knows it doesn't exist. You know it doesn't exist. And yet they still walk around expecting it, and sellers — wanting to be helpful — play along with the pretense.

Expectations management is the work of gently bringing customer expectations back to what's actually real — without being a jerk, without losing the deal, and without letting them keep pretending that the champagne-on-beer-budget is available somewhere else if you just won't give it to them.

Industry terms this page covers

The McDonald's vs. steakhouse analogy

Here's how I teach this. Picture two restaurants.

McDonald's. I expect my Big Mac to be tasty. If it's not — eh, it's McDonald's. It's fast food. What am I going to do, demand a refund? Return the sandwich? I paid five bucks. My expectation was calibrated to the price.

The steakhouse. I'm paying $50 for a steak. I expect that steak to be phenomenal. If it's mediocre, I'm sending it back. If the service is slow, I'm upset. I'm not asking for a Michelin-level experience at Sizzler — I'm asking for the experience that matches what I paid for.

Now here's what contractors do:

"They come to our steakhouse and want to negotiate us down to Sizzler prices. And then they want the steak to have extra sauce, and they want the baked potato thrown in, and they want the sides included. What kind of steakhouse is this?"

That's the dynamic. They're asking for steakhouse output at Sizzler cost. And if you don't manage it — if you don't gently put the expectation back in line — you end up running around trying to deliver steakhouse quality on Sizzler margins, and you burn out, lose money, or disappoint them anyway.

The cable-guy window

Another one I love. Think about the last time a repair guy came to your house.

"Have you ever had a repairman or the cable install guy come to your house and they give you a four-hour window? Four hours? Why do they do that? Because they don't know how long the install is going to be before you. It could be quick, it could take two hours, they don't know. So they give you a four-hour window."

Nobody — nobody — complains about the four-hour window. We all accept it. "Okay, Tuesday afternoon, got it, I'll be home."

Now picture concrete:

"Concrete guys are bitching if it's five minutes late. Five minutes."

Think about that. The cable installer gets a four-hour grace period from you. Your customer gives the concrete driver five minutes.

That's a completely unreasonable expectation, and the reason it exists is that nobody has ever pushed back on it. The industry has allowed the customer to believe that concrete trucks run on literal train-schedule precision — in a business where the truck before yours might have had a job extended, might have hit traffic, might have had the pump fail.

Your job, gently, over time, is to re-baseline that expectation. Not by being defensive. By being honest — up front, before the problem — about what realistic actually looks like.

The two directions to lower expectations

The key move I teach:

"Lower expectations — theirs and yours."

Both directions.

Theirs — the customer. You have to, in the early parts of the relationship, re-calibrate what they should actually expect. On-time rates in concrete are genuinely 60/40 at best. Schedules shift. Trucks go sideways. Mixes change. That's the real business. A customer operating on a "100% on-time or I'm mad" baseline is going to be mad approximately 40% of the time — which means the relationship is doomed before it starts.

Yours — you. Sellers carry their own unrealistic expectations. They expect every customer to appreciate them immediately. They expect the quote they worked hard on to close. They expect the partner they served for three years to never shop. These expectations are also champagne-on-beer-budget, and they're what make you frustrated, defensive, and burnt out.

Reset both. Yours, inside. Theirs, out loud, gently, over time.

How to re-calibrate expectations without being a jerk

You don't re-baseline expectations by telling the customer they're being unreasonable. That never lands. You re-baseline by being honest up front about what they should actually expect — framed as your commitment to them, not as a warning.

Before the first pour on a new relationship:

"Hey — one thing I want to set up right with you. Concrete is not a pizza delivery. When things are going perfect, we nail the schedule. But every now and then, a truck before you runs long, or a pump fails, or a batch has to be redone. I'm going to be honest with you when that happens and I'll work the phone to minimize it. But if you're expecting 100% precise, nobody in this industry can give you that, and I'd rather set that up with you on day one than argue about it on day 30."

Nine customers out of ten will respect that and thank you. They've been waiting for somebody to talk to them like an adult. The tenth one — who tells you "I expect 100%" — has just told you they're going to be an impossible customer and you get to decide whether you still want them on your book.

Expectations about price itself

The champagne-taste-beer-budget dynamic shows up most often on price. Customer wants premium delivery and service at commodity pricing. Sellers accept the frame and try to deliver it. Burn out. Give too much. Quit.

Re-calibrate:

"I hear you that price matters. Let me be honest with you: our price reflects what we actually deliver. If you want us to match the cheapest quote in the market, I could probably get close — but then I'm also going to have to tell you that we'd be pulling back on some of the things you've been getting for free. The late-pour calls, the proactive dispatcher, the emergency mixes. That stuff costs money. You get to choose: price match and get what the cheap guys provide, or keep our price and keep the service. I don't want to pretend both are free."

Most customers don't actually want the cheap version. They just want to see if you'll hand it to them. When you tell them the truth — that premium costs premium — a lot of them back off the price pressure, because they already know they want the premium. They just wanted to test whether you'd give it to them at a discount.

The seller who lets customers keep the "I should get the premium for cheap" fantasy is doing both of them a disservice. Telling the truth — kindly, clearly, once — is a gift.

Your own expectations — the inside work

Let me say something about your expectations, because this is where a lot of sellers get stuck.

Expectations you should lower:

• That every quote should close. Most won't. That's normal.
• That every customer should like you. Some won't. That's normal.
• That every loyal customer should stay loyal forever. They won't. Someone's pitching them right now. That's normal.
• That your number should never be shopped. It will be. That's normal.
• That a warm handoff means a won deal. It doesn't always. That's normal.
• That if you just do good work, the work will speak for itself. It won't. You still have to sell. That's normal.

Every one of those is an expectation that, when violated, makes a seller frustrated or defensive. Lowering them doesn't make you cynical. It makes you resilient. You stop taking the normal business of selling personally. You start playing the long game.

The celebration side — when expectations ARE met

Flip side of the expectations work: when the champagne-budget reality is delivered, celebrate it out loud.

"Wait — your truck was on time? Woo-hoo! That's amazing. That's great."

"Why are you celebrating? Oh — because a lot of times they're not there when you expected them. And when they are, I want to actually notice."

This is a stroke for the operations team and a re-baseline for the customer all at once. It's lightly humorous, it acknowledges the real difficulty of the industry, and it subtly reinforces that on-time is actually a win — not a baseline. Over time, that reframes the customer's mental baseline without you ever having to confront them directly.

Homework — the expectations audit

This week:

1. Pick three customer relationships where you've been frustrated recently. For each, ask: what unstated expectation of mine got violated? And was that expectation reasonable?
2. Pick one customer who's been unreasonable with you lately. Schedule a real conversation and run a gentle version of the "let me set us up right" script. Don't be defensive — just honest.
3. Run the cable-guy experiment: the next time a truck is a few minutes late and the customer complains, say (with warmth): "Yeah — I hear you. For reference, the cable guy gives me a four-hour window and I never complain. I'm working on getting us tighter, but just to calibrate what you should actually expect — concrete isn't pizza delivery. I want to be real with you on that." Watch what happens.

Report back: did any relationships feel less heavy by week's end?

Where to go next

• Price vs. Value Orientation — the price-side of expectation-setting
• Clark Kent — the posture that lets you re-baseline without being defensive
• Under-promise / Over-deliver — the mechanical output of good expectation management
• Strokes — the positive-side work when expectations ARE met

Source: drawn from 85 moments across the live-coaching corpus — including the champagne-taste-beer-budget formula, the McDonald's-vs-steakhouse analogy, the four-hour cable-guy window, and the "lower expectations, theirs AND yours" mantra. Voice preserved.