Not surprisingly, a lot of business owners are perfectionists; the service that they provide demands them to be that way. To avoid this and become a successful business owner, you must be aware that Perfection Kills Momentum!
Being a perfectionist makes complete sense, after all, nobody wants an accountant who ‘nearly’ files a VAT return, a marketing consultant who ‘nearly’ gets a new Google Ads campaign up and running or a Financial Adviser who ‘nearly’ puts their clients money into a solid investment but misses the final step to do so.
The details of providing the service that you provide are what set you aside from the competition, so you want every part of the service that you provide to be ‘perfect’.
However, therein lies the problem. Business owners often believe that because the provision of their service has to be perfect before they get paid, the same thing must also apply to their marketing too.
They wrongly believe that until their website is ‘perfect’, they cannot let it go live, meaning that they have a holding page saying “Website coming soon” which is costing them thousands of pounds in lost business.
A website is one of your marketing arteries because it is the first place that even someone recommended to your business will go to discover more about you.
When is a website ever perfect?
I can tell you that it is never, yet the fact that it is live and ready for your ideal prospects to find you is a million times better than a holding page with ‘Website coming soon’ stamped on it.
Any client seeing this for the first time when they research your business can only think the following:
“Wow, they haven’t even got a website, which either means that they are brand new in business or they are just really inefficient. Do I want to work with a business that can’t even finish their own website – I don’t think so!”
Perfection can also stop business owners from sending their first email to a huge list of clients and referrers, because it isn’t quite yet perfect.
They are not sure how to phrase a certain aspect of the email, so it sits there, not being sent.
Whilst this period of inactivity of often weeks or months goes by, their old clients, not having heard from the firm for a long time, head back to Google when they next need the service that they provide and choose a competitor to help them.
If only they had sent the email; any email, they would have had some repeat business without any price objections (returning clients are much less likely to shop around).
Perfection prevents business owners from putting themselves forward to give a talk on a topic at a conference full of potential clients because they don’t quite yet know everything there is to know about the topic in question.
They feel that they need to have complete and ‘perfect’ knowledge before they can give the talk, so a competitor does the talk and cleans up with a whole batch of new clients.
When it comes to marketing, if you want to achieve the holy grail of a steady and consistent flow of new clients it is vital that it builds momentum.
Marketing needs momentum. Perfection KILLS momentum!
Marketing can and never will be perfect. It just needs to be good enough at first, and then you can work on perfection later.
The truth is that very few pieces of marketing are ever perfect. Many pieces, even from great brands, initially run with copy errors or typos, but they still work.
They are later tweaked and improved to work better, but at least they ran them in the first place and picked up some new business.
You have to accept that your marketing will work so very much better for you even with some minor flaws if it goes live than it ever will sitting on your ‘to do later’ pile.
The key thing is that once you get your marketing live, whether it be your website or sending that email, you will soon notice and fix any errors, because it will now become a ‘must do’ item on your list rather than a ‘might do’ item.
Until you accept that marketing must not be treated in the same way as the provision of your prime service, you will always struggle to generate the steady and consistent flow of new clients that your business needs and that you deserve.
Conversely, when you do accept this, and start letting your marketing run free and take consistent daily action to grow your business, before checking emails on your telephone or laptop so that your head is clear to focus on your business, you can really make some dramatic inroads into being as busy and profitable as you have ever wanted to be or dreamed about being.
To discover more about ‘How To Become A Successful Business Owner”, download the guide below to get clients coming to you consistently.