Don’t do business with idiots – I know it might sound a little bit harsh but I’m going to tell you why. I’m Samuel Junghenn and today we are talking about filtering out your clients and only dealing with people you really want to work with – people who inspire you and motivate you to do a better job in your business.
Now I see this a lot in businesses we consult with and many of them are so desperate for business they accept anyone as their client and they end up not producing as good a result as they could have if they filter their clients and chose who they want to work with more precisely.
So let’s just say for a moment you have a client approach you and they might come in and say “okay how much is your service or your product?” and then you tell them “okay its $2000 for my product or services”. They may try to haggle with you telling you they can get a better price down the road and try to beat you down on price – that’s the first sign!
You may drop your price or you may not. I suggest not dropping your price because it comes down to a reflection of how good your business is and what it provides. If you are willing to drop your price then possibly it might show the client you are vulnerable and maybe you don’t believe in your product or service as much as someone else.
By dropping your price you’ve given them the power over the business relationship and when you start working together this will continue. You’ll often find these kinds of clients always have an issue with what you are doing, something will always be not quite right.
Now they may be trying to control the relationship so that they can possibly haggle with you on price once again.They usually pay their bills late and you need to call them up a number of times which costs you a lot of time in your own business you could have spent working with much better clients to get them a better result or to provide them with better products.
So what this does to us as business owners is it drags us down or drags our motivation down in such a way we don’t feel like going to work or we don’t feel like putting in a 100% effort into this particular client anymore. If you are not putting 100% into this particular client then you are not going to get as good a result compared to working with someone who is fun to be around, always pay their bills on time and very grateful for what you do.
As bad as it sounds everyone does it – if they are better clients you treat them better, you are happy putting in extra hours, stay back late and do whatever it takes to get them amazing results over a person who “bitches and moans” and pay their bills late or always has an issue with what you are doing.
The way I look at it, there are seven billion people on the planet you could potentially do business with and some of them might be a little bit young. The point is there is a whole truck load of people out there you could be doing business with. You don’t need these other people in your life if they are going to make your life miserable or if they are going to make your work not as fun as it could be because they are basically dragging down your whole business.
If you don’t feel like going to work today or don’t feel like spending the extra time and effort and don’t feel like putting the energy in to this particular client – all that filters out to the rest of your business and onto the group of clients who you could be doing more amazing stuff for had you not had a few bad apples in the cart.
So there is really a big opportunity cost here I would like you to see. So if you do business with a fantastic person then there is no opportunity for you to be in business with the bad people or the non-preferred clients – let’ call it that and vice-versa If you take on people that you don’t want to work with.
You only have 24 hours in a day, we all have 24 hours in a day and you can’t get any more and you can’t get any less – that’s what we’ve got to work with. If you have an 8 hour project let’s say for example and you allow a non-preferred client to engage in your services or buy your products then you allocated those 8 hours of your life to this particular person. That means you cannot allocate it to the amazing client who is fun to be with and energetic and really appreciates you for what you do in your business.
So you have to think about the opportunity cost – you get to say to this one so there’s opportunity for the person who builds you up and motivates you to do better in your business.
So just a suggestion that you may want to do and it’s something that I do, get a piece of paper and draw it up into 3 columns. In one column you are going to put the ultimate client – you’re going to list every aspect of working with people that you absolutely love. Just paint out the picture and don’t put any constraints on it. Just think about what would be your ideal client and list everything.
- What age are they?
- What sex are they?
- What sort of things are they interested in?
- What sort of businesses are they in?
- Do they pay in advance or do they pay just in time?
Whatever it is that you like just list down your ultimate client – how much are they paying you? Do you go out to dinner with clients on a regular basis and is it more on a friendly basis – you know going out to the pub and you have a drink with them? Just list out every single thing that would make up that ideal client.
In the middle column, list out everything that you are willing to put up with a client. These are things that are not negative and they are not positive but this is where the line is drawn. It might be – okay I’m willing to put with payments within 30 days and as long as they pay in 30 days they go in that column if that’s what you are willing to put up with to keep the business going.
On the last column I want you to draw the line and have the deal breakers. These are the things that you are not willing to put up with in your business anymore and what we now have is a very structured filtering process so that if someone comes to purchase your products or services you can easily allocate them to a group.
If they are in the deal breaker column then it’s an instant no – sorry your services or your products are not right for them and you need to get used to saying no because every time you say no it’s going to provide you the opportunity to say yes to the other people that you do want to work with. Now it may seem a little bit counter-intuitive for business and you don’t want to do it but believe me it will make an amazing difference for your business.
For the middle column, what you want to do with these people is you want to try to move them – if you have clients come in and they are “so-so” you put in all energy and effort and you still give them amazing service even though they are not your ultimate client.You want to try to move them over the ultimate client column.
Educate them about how you work at your peak and what motivates you to do better for them as their provider of products or services then you continually build your business the way you want to do it. You’ll have more energy and more passion to put into the people that are in your ultimate column and life will be so much easier because these people generally are happy to pay more and don’t question the price or value and they will tell more people than the other columns.
I hope this has been useful. If you got some value out of it, please subscribe to the channel and share the video. This is what motivates me to keep making these videos and providing value to you. It is when I see them being shared that it motivates me to make more. So I hope you enjoyed it and I’ll see you in the next episode!
