I just saw a commercial on television that referred to the “Perfect 10″.  Remember Bo Derek running on the beach?  When this commercial alluded to the “Perfect 10″, my thoughts drifted to how we often handicap our business by waiting for the “Perfect 10″.  Years ago (and I mean YEARS AGO), I was in the computer business and competed against IBM.  We used to joke that IBM stood for “I’ve Been Misinformed”.  Not too kind a joke about a competitor, but it originated from the fact that in those days IBM would put a carboard mockup of a future computer in front of their customers and the customers would place more orders than the competitors would receive from existing products… a supreme example of their Ready, Fire, AIM strategy.

I am not advocating that we deceive customers, but I am making the point that we can’t wait for all to be a “Perfect 10″ before we make that sales call or make a move forward in our business.  In today’s world, even more true than in Bo Derek’s era, the agility of a business and its ability to respond quickly to the demands of the market is sometimes more important than getting it perfect.  The computer world has trained us to buy the latest software and use it while we wait for the next release that “gets the bugs out”.

What is it that is causing you to wait?  Perhaps you should ACT NOW.  If you are waiting for the “Perfect 10″ moment, your competitor may beat you to the punch with a Good 8.  Something to think about!

A final irrelevant AND irreverant postcript – in ‘research’ for this posting, your 5’10″ blogger found out that Bo Derek was a mere 5’3″…. so maybe she wasn’t a Perfect 10 after all – what a delightful thought!

I am just surprised it is not Friday the 13th.  Yes, the dreaded THING happened thisafternoon.  My hard drive on my main laptop crashed.  Not good.  YES, I KNOW, no biggie if you have backup. Good news is I do have backup.  Bad news is NOT as RECENTLY as I should have.  So for any of you who have sent me a critical email in the last several weeks, just feel free to resend to me!  If I have sent something important to you… feel free to send that back to me.

 I guess this all points out that I am not perfect… not that this is news to anyone who knows me very well.  So IS THERE a GET COMMON SENSE customer service message hidden in here somewhere?   Well have you heard of a company called DELL????  I have Gold Support with Dell and was on the phone with them within 5 minutes of when my system was kind enough to tell me that it had just done a “physical memory dump”.  Even though I was somewhat close to a nervous breakdown, the rep was cool as a cucumber.  His calm for the next 20 minutes (as he confirmed that my hard drive was toast) was almost as good as some prescription meds….well maybe.  Anway… I had just experienced one of the most stressfull things that I can think could happen in my business and when the call was over and they asked me to stay on for a short survey, I rated this guy a 5 out of 5 in every category.  When they they asked if I would buy a Dell again, I said yes for some unknown reason even though they have in 3 years replaced my keyboard 3 times (I take out all my frustration on it evidently!!) and my screen twice, and now my hard drive.  So WHY did I say yes?  Because they always have someone competent on the other end of the line when I call and their response time is always great. (worth the extra money by the way to get GOLD service as that gets you an ENGLISH speaking rep within a couple of minutes who you can actually understand).

Thanks to those of you who have posted comments.  You are now entered in the February drawing.  Keep those comments coming!  And we will all hope that next week is better than this week!