Perfection Can Hurt Your Business

Last week, I sat with clients whom after 5 months of consulting, still had not decided on a logo.

Due to confidentiality reasons, I can not reveal the name of the firm I consulted, but it they are reading this, they'll know who they are.

Let me give you a bit of background on this situation, and perhaps you'll see how it may affect your own business.

When I first meet with a prospective client, I assertain whether I can help them with a free consultation. If I believe that I can help them grow by a minimum of 10% increase in annual revenue, and the prospective client agrees to hire me as their marketing consultant, I immediately schedule a Marketing Audit.

The Marketing Audit is designed to reveal the business's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. It will also help me design the best marketing strategy to help it grow the fastest.

In this case, the client decided that after 24 years of service, they wanted a new look for their 25th year anniversary. This meant designing a new logo, business card, brochure, stationary, web site, and promotional products.

Normally, a total company re-design would take one to two months from concept, to implementation. This means that after the tools have been created, we are able to use them to implement all marketing strategies.

Here's where the problem began. After 5 months and about 20 different logo renditions, 5 brochure redesigns, and 10 different ad designs, my client decided to keep their original logo, with minor changes.

Now, it's ok to change your mind twenty times. However, you should decide as quickly as possible in order to get things moving along.

The reason for changing their minds so often? There are two reasons...

1) They listened to all of the different opinions from their staff. Yes, it's good to get your staff involved in order to increase employee morale, if necessary. However, in most cases, your staff knows nothing about marketing, graphic design, or anything that has to do with growing your business.

2) They wasted time perfecting each and every design they later changed their mind on.

If you ever hire a professional to do a job for you, and that professional has a proven track record, you should let them do their job. Not doing so, will only be a waste of money for you.

Case-in-point...5 months of indecision have cost this client 5 months worth of payments to me, and 5 months worth of unrealized additional revenue that would have been gained as a result of implementing the marketing strategies.

The good news is that we were able to implement some of the marketing strategies that did not need the use of any of their tools, and they were still able to increase their revenue and decrease some of their expenses, thereby increasing overall revenue by over 10% within the 5 month period.

Perfection, and indecision have played a big role in losing time and revenue for my client.

Don't let the same thing happen to you.

Till next post.

Edison Guzman
www.aeadvertising.com
www.AutomaticEcommerce.com
www.FreshContentEveryMonth.com
www.aeDomains.com