If you've hung around on forums or at events for any length of time you'll no doubt hear people asking “what's the best…?”

What's the best email system? What's the best landing page design?

What's the best way to introduce yourself? What are the best questions to ask?

And it's good to be on the lookout for good ideas and to try to understand what “best practice” looks like.

But you have to remember that best practice for someone else might not be best practice for you. Or it might be only marginally better and not worth the costs of switching.

Even if something would work better for you, you just might not want to do it.

Every now and then I do webinars to promote a product and I usually have a deadline for whatever I'm offering. I'll send follow up emails after the webinar and try to make each one useful, with a reminder of the deadline. 

Now I absolutely know for a fact that I would get more sales if I sent more emails and was more aggressive in each one. Pretty much every test I've seen has shown that sending 2, 3 or even 4 or more emails on the last day of a deadline gets you more sales.

But it's just not something I want to do to my audience.

It's not even about long term vs short term. In my mind, it's about being a decent person and not trying to bludgeon out every possible sale. 

(Yeah, I know the line about how if you believe your product helps people it's your duty to get them to buy it. I think that's just a convenient rationalisation for over-aggressive salespeople).

Being successful in business isn't about maximising sales or profits. it's about maximising how good you feel. As long as you're doing well, I don't think those extra few sales are worth it.

So don't assume that you need to do the absolute “best” thing in everything you do. Make the choices that work for you.