As a business owner, it can make sense to think you need to do everything in your business perfectly. Many would-be business owners certainly start out this way. And after all, good business is built on trust: your clients need to trust they’ll receive high quality results from you.
But high quality results doesn’t necessarily mean do everything absolutely perfectly.
Sometimes it can mean that you do a handful of priority elements perfectly and a good job on the rest.
If you try to do every single minute detail perfectly in your business, you actually wind up being counterproductive. But of course, there are some things you absolutely need to get done right.
The Pros & Cons Of Each Approach
So, how can you tell when you should strive to be perfect and when should efficiency take priority?
Well, we’ve broken down the best use case scenarios for each approach down below.
Tasks That Should Strive For Perfection:
There’s no getting around it: when you strive for perfection in your work, you more than often hit your mark and produce the best outcome for your clients. It’s downside is of course that it takes tremendous amount of time to action. So, the name of the game here is to find the most important projects to try and be perfect on, because they have the highest rate of return on your effort investment.
#1: Your First Impression With A New Client
Your first impression with a potential new client is the single most important facet involved in winning them as a client.
For this reason, you’ll want to ensure you’re making a perfect first impression – or as close to it as possible.
If you only try to do a good job, rather than a great one, you could come across as unprepared or lazy in your first meeting with them. This is because first meetings are unpredictable and the prospect does not know you yet: they can only reasonably judge you on things like preparation and your impression.
Plus, the potential lifetime value of a long-term client is significant – meaning the stakes warrant the attempt at perfection.
#2: The Final Version Of Your Website
There’s nothing wrong with being picky about your website: just like first impressions, your website is usually the first thing a potential client sees about your business.
It certainly pays to leave them impressed and interested in your business.
Besides, websites are normally a large, if not tremendous undertaking. Building one is not something business owners typically repeat more than once every five or ten years. So, you’ll want to make sure it’s right the first time around, so that it pays dividends to your brand impression for years to come.
#3: Accuracy Regarding Your Finances Is Paramount To Success
It’s no secret that your finances are what keep your business running. But for payroll and tax purposes, they need to be exact.
How exact, you ask? Right down to the decimal. Mishandling finances is the number one cause of businesses failing in the modern landscape.
Knowing exactly how much you have to spend on growth, staff, marketing, and rent will let you expand your business efficiently and safely.
The inverse is also true: thinking you have more funds than you do – such as thinking all profit is yours and not considering debt and wages – can quickly lead you to overextending your business.
Luckily, our team has over one hundred and fifty years of combined accounting and bookkeeping experience to ensure your finances stay on track. Contact us today to learn about our accounting solutions.
Tasks That Should Strive To Be Good Enough:
On the other side of the coin, we have tasks that garner the most amount of progress from being completed first, and quality of completion second. This might sound counterintuitive, but some tasks can have diminishing returns on the amount of effort you expend to complete them.
#1: Your Ads Don’t Need To Be Perfect But They Do Need To Run
Some business owners can make the mistake of thinking their digital ads need to be perfect before launching them.
But the most important part of a successful ad campaign is experimentation. You need to test as many different angles as possible (of which there are countless many) in order to find what creative combination resonates most with your audience.
You could be running an ad that you spent weeks perfecting, but if it’s the only one, you’ll neve know if a slightly different ad could be performing five times better.
It’s only when you find the right combination of image, video, copy, call to action and audience (which can take hundreds of tests) that you’ll want to knuckle down and get it perfect.
Meanwhile, perfectionism can hold back your ads from gathering valuable data.
#2: Emails Don’t Need To Be Glamorous
An email is a communication tool in its most concise form. They are meant to be sent quickly to streamline project management and update all parties involved.
Therefor, your emails should be short, to the point, and as simple as possible so your recipient can be clear what you’re communicating.
If you’re agonizing over minute details in your email, you could be bottlenecking productivity on client assignments. Like, if you’re spending more than five minutes typing out paragraph after paragraph, you might be better off simply calling a meeting.
#3: Meetings Don’t Need To Be Perfect – Just Productive
Remember that the main objective of a meeting is to get your team clear on their next actionable steps in their assigned project. This won’t be achieved by having the “perfect” meeting, because it doesn’t exist!
Trying to get every single person across every single component of your project – big picture and small – will lead to confusion and verbal back and forth.
The most productive meetings are short and assign two to three actionable steps for each individual.
Likewise, if you’re instead wanting to have a brainstorming session, there’s no such thing as perfection. Instead, it’s better to encourage your team to be creative with a “no bad suggestions” policy to encourage enthusiastic contribution.
We Can Help Get Your FInances Closer To Perfection
The fastest way to get your finances as close as possible to perfection is to hire a team of experienced and qualified accountants from the A Firm.
We can tailor a finance strategy to your business needs and ensure that your assets are growing at a more than just good enough rate.
Just call us today for your free meet and greet!