photo credit: orphanjones

I just got off the phone with someone who is just starting their freelancing business. I was coaching them on how to get their first client. They are so close, it’s very exciting! I remember those days fondly.

But then they said something which inspired this blog.

What they said is something I’ve heard time and time again from new and experienced freelancers. Basically, I asked them if they were going to be able to talk to their new prospect early in the week and get a proposal to them. They responded: “I don’t think I can do it this week, actually. I need to get my office in order. I have papers everywhere and I need to print off and familiarize myself with the contracts I’m using. As well, I need to finish putting together a proposal template so when I send something it looks professional.”

My heart sunk. I’d heard it so many times before.

The reality is, no business is perfect and you won’t ever achieve perfection. Business is messy and a successful entrepreneur embraces the messiness and works anyway. Your office won’t ever be just right to accept clients; you won’t ever know your contract so well as to feel confident about giving it to a client; you won’t ever have a perfect proposal template.

You won’t be perfect but you’ll get clients anyway. On the very, very, very rare occasion you might lose a client because your template wasn’t perfect or because you had a spelling error on your website, but that is extremely rare. Clients are looking for competence and not perfection.

You will be far more successful if you just barrel ahead with whatever you have and adopt the mentality that you will fix it on the fly.

This reminds me of a previous life….

Back before I was becoming a freelancer I worked in sales. Part of our job was to call back people who had phoned in requesting information on what we were selling and then set up an appointment with them. I confess that I didn’t get through all of my calls in the first segment of work. By the second segment of work I was still doing the first batch.

My supervisor came over and asked what was up. I pointed out that I needed to do all this intense research before calling the client. They pointed out that it wasn’t true. I thought I did in order to be prepared, but in reality, that was not the case: I really only covered basic things on the phone. I covered the same things over and over and it was rarely unique. In that sales job from years ago, I thanked the person for calling, answered any questions they had (but none of them were really unique questions) and set up the appointment.

As a freelancer, I actually do fairly similar things on the phone. Customers rarely ask for anything different from the other. And if there is something different, it gives them great confidence for me to say: “I’ll look into it and send you my reply by email.”

So what does this mean for you? Simple: Have a handle on what you do and decide to perfect on the fly. Demonstrate your competence more than anything else. Create relationships. Realize that any minor imperfection is more minor than you think it is!