We all know the importance of getting your accounts right, but the numbers aren’t the only place where accuracy is vitally important in your business.
Here are three other things you should make sure are done correctly.
Speaking the right language
While numbers are universally recognized around the world, no matter what language you’re writing in, there will be hundreds of millions of people who don’t understand a word of it.
If you want to target potential customers in foreign countries or those in the same country who speak a different language to you, it’s important that you translate any promotional material into their language as well.
This could be anything from creating a separate version of your website in a different language to printing separate leaflets or brochures or even adapting the email newsletters you send out.
You might think that you could simply copy and paste your text into tools like Google Translate to translate this text into another language.
The only problem with this is that, at best, this automatic translation will be difficult to read and might not even make any sense to the person who’s reading it, depending on how well the system has translated it.
Instead of leaving it to an online tool to translate this text, it’s important to use translation management software to help complete this job for you.
While much of the text you upload to this software will be translated automatically, you will also have the added benefit of getting someone who speaks both languages to look over the translation for you.
Rather than sending lots of different attachments back and forth, all they need to do is access the same software, and you’ll be able to see which articles have been approved as they’ve been checked.
Poor translation suggests to the customer that you don’t care about them and also makes your brand look unprofessional, so make sure you invest in getting every single translation correct.
Meeting deadlines
Another important thing to get right in business is time management. If you’re working on several projects for several different customers at once, it’s often hard to keep track of how long you have to complete each task.
As soon as you receive a new project, it’s vitally important that you plan when you’re going to work on it to be able to complete it before the deadline.
Write in your diary exactly which hours of the working week you need to spend on that project to meet your deadline.
Make sure you allow yourself extra time to account for any problems during the process so you can meet your deadline on time, if not early.
Remembering meetings
As well as deadlines, it’s important that you’re fully prepared for every meeting that you have in your diary.
Miss one meeting with a client, and it could be a good enough reason for them to not want to do business with you in the future.
The best way to make sure you don’t forget about these meetings is to set automatic reminders on the calendar on your phone or computer.
Make sure you set separate notifications to go off a few days and a few hours before your meeting, so you can be sure you’ll have enough time to prepare for the occasion.