You say you exceed expectations? Let others say how much!

A highly anticipated package from Costco, based on its contents, is coming a day early. They promised it for tomorrow and it’s arriving today. I like that. I think it’s smart business to over-achieve, even amid the pre-Christmas crush of deliveries, as I write this.

Little things can make a big impact. Make you memorable. Make you competitively advanced.

Like sending a proposal ahead of the deadline. Not at 1130pm the day it was due.

Like calling back or emailing a reply, in the moment. Not the next day.

Like coming in under budget. Now isn’t that memorable?

Like being complete and educational in your answer to questions posed to you. You rule your realm.

Is all this low hanging fruit? Perhaps, especially in today’s low-expectation world, as we have come to expect little and tolerate inefficency.

But isn’t a huge statement if you are timely, appreciative, educational, organized, professional, dependable, and true to how you want your brand recognized? (Notice I did not include brave, clean, and reverent…)

Let’s just call your differentiators the fruit of your labors. The things you learned and earned throughout your past career make you who you are in your present today and hint at where your prospective client can go with you in your future.

Here’s a LinkedIn twist on this topic: ask a special colleague or client to tell a story, in writing: a LinkedIn recommendation. As in when you exceeded expectations, shone, demonstrated professional prowess; in other words, their observations on how well you do what you do.

Your brand, woven throughout your LinkedIn profile, tells “why you do what you do,” and their words “how well you did what you did” adds further enhancement. Past-present-future, right?

You could talk about yourself all day long (please don’t), but when a recognized colleague commits admiration to writing a few paragraphs about you in a LinkedIn recommendation, the impression on the reader indelible, based on witnessing you at work, doing what you do best, and the magic is obvious. Then you sparkled, sparkle, will sparkle.

Check your recommendations now. Who is missing in helping you tell your brand story for you?

All you have to do is ask.