How Good is Good Enough?!

What percentage is the right number for a client to feel satisfied?  Where do we draw the line?

Do we follow the SBA guideline of giving 20% of each loan and getting 80% forgiveness?  80% sounds pretty good in most cases.  What about if the debt we are discussing is $1,000.000.00?  Is 80% forgiveness good enough?  Do you have $200,000.00 in a lump sum to shell out?

Second Wind Consultants averages around 7% payments, or if you look at it another way, 93% debt forgiveness.  Is that good enough?  Would you pay $75,000.00 to drop the million and debt and go on with your lives?  Could you come up with the funds?

Personally I think even 80% forgiveness is fantastic.  I think 93% is a home run any day of the week and we have provided impossible results.

Today I got verbal agreement from a banker for an offer on a little over $996,000.00 in debt.  There are three partners I am saving and got agreement of $35,000.00, $13,000.00, and $12,000.00 respectively.  Needless to say I was overjoyed.  In my book that is a grand slam.  To put this in percentages that means 96.5%, 98.7%, and 98.8% forgiveness, or paying 3.5%, 1.3%, and 1.2% respectively.

In my book that is well beyond good enough.  It is impossible, improbable and the client should be overjoyed.  Instead, the client sent me an email asking why it was so high considering we started about $15,000.00 lower on our initial offer.

So how good do we have to be for a client to be satisfied?  Can we get better?  Should I ask for the SBA to write these men a check and drop the million dollars hanging over their heads at the same time?

In my client’s defense they are cash tight, but if doing the impossible is not good enough, where is the line?