How to Start Off On the Right Foot with your Project Stakeholders

How projects start often foretell how they will end.

As a project leader how you set up your key project stakeholder relationships to first impress and then completely win them over is key.  Based upon hundreds of project post mortems, here are three tips to begin key relationships effectively…

1. Be honest. There is nothing to be gained by overselling your deliverables. On the contrary, when you can’t deliver cost, quality or time as promised, you will lose their trust and the project will suffer.
2. Respond in a timely fashion. The quicker you deliver on their requests, the more impressed they will be at how well you listen and how speedily you produce quality answers, information and results.
3. Keep in regular touch. Don’t let your initial eagerness to impress and your attention to their needs fade. If it does, they are apt to think that the project is in trouble or that their needs are not as important. 

Start new project relationships well and you are likely to create invested stakeholders and exceed their expectations.