What are you testing right now?

Is it giving you the results that you want?

How many of us are guilty of working on a new project until it’s perfect? Refining something over and over again until you’re sure it’s 100% right and ready to roll out? But right before it’s meant to go live, we balk, and pull it back to fine tune a few more things - repeating this ad nauseum until it’s no longer relevant, or it never sees the light of day? I know I’ve done it and I know many other business owners have as well.

We’re scared of putting something out into the world before it’s ready, we’re scared that something isn’t going to work out quite the way we want and it’s going to fail. So instead of launching we hold onto it, convinced that we can foresee all potential failures if we just spend enough time working on it before rolling it out. If we’re honest with ourselves, we know there’s no way we can predict all the things that might go wrong, so trying to do that before releasing a new project or a new process is not a good use of our time. But that doesn’t stop us from trying. 

The mindset that I’ve been trying to practice more, and preaching to my clients is that of testing new things, tracking results, and refining the process as we go. It’s a far better use of our time and energy, and we can use the feedback that we get from real results to make changes. The changes that we make based on actual data are far better than us trying to predict what might happen in certain situations, and the results that we get will be a much better indication of the real preferences of our clients/prospects/employees. Putting something out into the world before it’s “perfect” can be nerve wracking, it’s scary to know that something isn’t going to work exactly the way we want it to - but we can’t really know how it’s going to perform until it’s out there and living in our business.

I’ve been pushing my clients to start with a two-week test. Take your new system, as imperfect as it may be right now, and push it out into the business for two weeks, track the results that you’re getting and make adjustments after the two week window is over. It’s important to give it time to breathe, to give it those two weeks, because if we jump in the moment it goes live and start trying to make changes we’re not getting the feedback and data we need to make it more effective. Just because something doesn’t work on the first try doesn’t mean it’s destined to fail, so giving it two weeks is a great way to start. This also takes the pressure off of us to fix everything all the time - we can trust that this two week test isn’t going to sink our business, and we can sit back and watch the results that we’re getting. Once your test period is over gather the information you need (pull in your team if you need to) and work on refining the system. Then, test it again. 

Once you get the hang of this test-track-refine cycle you can run a whole bunch of tests simultaneously, in different areas of your business, and manage the process from a high-level owner’s point of view. EMyth calls this process the Innovation Cycle - it’s a critical part of the EMyth Approach, and a crucial lesson for clients to learn and internalize. I’ve found it’s best to start with smaller items and work your way up to the big hairy things that need to be addressed in your business systems. But I’m confident there are things that can be tested and improved in any business. 

Looking for a place to start? I put together a list of 20 items you can test, track, and refine for your business - let this list inspire you and look for places you can improve. 

1. The way you greet customers when they walk into your office/store
2. The way you greet customers on the phone
3. The way you say goodbye to customers as they leave your office/store
4. The way you say goodbye to customers on the phone
5. The signage you use on your front door
6. The way a sales person greets a client at their business
7. The way you talk to returning customers
8. The way you talk to new customers
9. The way you mention special offers as a customer checks out
10. The way you mention special offers after a customer has purchased
11. The color shirt/tie/pants/shoes your sales people wear
12. The voicemail message on your phone system
13. The email signature you use
14. The font/text color on your in-store/in-office signage
15. The font/text color in your emails
16. The type of beverage you offer someone while they wait
17. The way you explain why you kept someone waiting
18. The amount of time you wait to respond to customer questions
19. The number of outbound contact points for new customers
20. The number of outbound contact points for existing customers

There are all kinds of things you can test and try to improve your key metrics in your business. Don’t assume that any of these things are too small to matter - every one of these items could have an impact on your bottom line. Test it, track it, and refine it.

Once you’ve got the hang of this process you’ll find that building new things and introducing changes in your business is more effective and less stressful. There are real practical changes you can make in the business starting right now if you’ll give them a chance. Keep track of the things that matter and your ability to test and refine things will improve over time, but the biggest shift that has to happen is internal. You have to get your mindset right to allow things to start out as “imperfect” and improve over time - you have to get comfortable with the idea of testing new things and refining them. If you can get yourself to that place mentally, the rest will come easily.

Use the list above as a jumping off point, and if you decide to test something new because of this article please let me know in the comments below!