The advice to 'under promise and over deliver' was given by Thomas J (Tom) Peters, a US writer perhaps best known for his 1982 book, written with Robert H Waterman Jr, 'In Search of Excellence'.
The full quote is 'Formula for success: under promise and over deliver'.
Many businesses fail because they consistently promise more than they can actually deliver: the promises might get them a lot of new business, but the lack of actual results won't bring them return business, which is what counts. They might get by with more and more promises for a while, but eventually too many customers will hear of their bad practices and they'll go out of business. Word of mouth once was fairly limited, perhaps within a city, or town, but today people wanting to know about a firm's reputation before they give them their business only need put the company name into a search engine to bring up complaints and negative blogs - as well as good reports and compliments - before they spend a cent.
See link below for other Tom Peters quotes.
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