Argh!! I can’t tell you how many times I get told, “well, I just need to get one more thing in place to be really ready.” Ready most often meaning more efficient, able to gather data, or research “stuff”.
Truth is, I’m totally guilty of it, too.
In 2001, I took over a 50 person manufacturing company in Philadelphia. The organization was struggling with both operations and sales. I embarked on fixing both. I jumped in head first to fix operations, and executed on it with no major hesitations or doubts. But in sales, it was a different story. I felt that I had to have a bunch of “stuff” in place so I was ready to start selling.
What was that “stuff”? I longed for a perfect logo, business cards, well-designed professional marketing brochures, a CRM, CRM training, my elevator pitch, the right clothes. The list goes on and on. I bought data, researched who I thought would buy our products and how I would approach them. I worried about the company name and mission, vision and values. Want to know how long this all took? About three months. All the while, I justified the time it was taking to make sure that when I got in front of someone that EVERYTHING would be perfect.
Then I got out there. Guess what? No one wanted my brochure and they sure as hell didn’t care about my shoes or my pitch. All they cared about was the VALUE that I could provide them and, even after all that preparation, it still took me another three months to hone my pitch and get my appointment calendar really filled up. By that point, I had lost six months of precious time trying to fill the factory with work. Lesson learned.
So yes, a logo is important. And you certainly want to speak clearly and honestly about what you’re selling. But these things get revised and honed along the way. Simply put, while it’s beneficial to get things right, there is no substitution for simply getting out there and overcoming the inertia of the project ahead.
As for “being ready”, you’re ready when you can present a value of what you’re selling by giving a real world example of how that product or service provided more value than it cost.