The other day, I was talking to a friend who was peeved with
his boss.
It seems one of the company’s consultants realized that a
certain type of client was easy to work with, didn’t
complain about their invoices and paid in a timely manner.
In the marketing trade, these are what we call “good
clients.”
At the same time, he was able to identify a type of client
that was the exact opposite. They wasted the consultant’s
time, complained about the price and rarely paid on time.
Worse yet, these “bad clients” siphoned attention away from
the good clients.
Not surprisingly, with the good clients, the company makes
more money in less time and with less hassle.
With the bad clients, the company makes less money, spends
more time and deals with many more hassles.
And morale suffers, too, because it’s such a drag to work
with these people.
It seems obvious that the company should go out of its way
to search out the kind of people who make for good clients,
while referring the soul-suckers to the competition.
Yet, it’s not so obvious to the company’s owner, who refuses
to turn any business away whatsoever. He believes that along
with the cream, he has to take what’s at the bottom of the
barrel, too.
All to make sure the business grows.
And this is what had my friend all hacked off. He’s sick and
tired of working with these crummy clients. They make
everyone miserable, and my friend is convinced the company
would be better off without them. They are dragging everyone
into the muck.
If something like this is happening — or ever happens with
your business — the solution is two-fold:
1) Dump the scarcity mentality. Many business owners — even
successful ones — are convinced that good customers are so
scarce and so hard to find, that they have to do whatever it
takes to land one or keep one.
So they grovel at their prospects’ feet, slash prices at the
drop of a hat and come running whenever the client whistles.
This is no way to live … or to run a business.
You’re far better off assuming that there’s an abundance of
good clients out there that you can tap into to grow your
business …
… and that you never have to deal with bad clients or put
up with their wicked ways.
Because the simple fact is, if you offer a product or
service that people want, then there’s no shortage of good
customers out there ready and willing to do business with
you.
It’s your job to find them, so you never again have to deal
with people you don’t want to deal with.
Which brings us to:
2) You need to have a system in place for regularly
generating those good clients.
This is where my friend’s company went off the rails. They
had almost nothing in place for building the business, other
than an occasional (lame) ad and an occasional (boring) blog
post.
No sales funnel. No lead magnets. No sales letter. No ezine.
No nothing.
No wonder good clients seem so scarce.
The good news is, you can power up your client-attraction
efforts with very little effort — and without having to set
up a complicated sales funnel.
It’s possible thanks to a powerful four-part formula that
I’ll give you tomorrow.
