Last week, I wrote about 4 ways to boost your bottom line and mentioned that increasing your number of customers was the hardest, most expensive and time consuming of the four… I got a couple of emails telling me that “…their business was different, that the ONLY way to grow was new customers….” Well, to be clear, I didn’t say not to get new customers, just know that there is a larger cost involved.

Most businesses still need to follow leads and encourage prospective clients with marketing and outreach programs. But, unless you can close 100% of the time, you are spending more time and effort educating new prospects, than you would if you were selling to current or past customers who already know how great you are.

So let me piss-off those who contacted me with the news that “I just don’t understand” some more. Nobody’s business is that different when it comes to the basics‑‑business is business.

Remember my mentioning author Michael Port’s “Red Velvet Rope Policy” about creating a red velvet rope for only those you do your best work with? Pre-screen prospects before you have to “fire them” to save you both time, money and headaches.

Pre-screen prospects

This week we turned down an excited “client”, yes turned her down. She was excited to have us work on her project. After listening to the long list of other design companies failures, we just knew from the 2 short conversations, that no matter what we did for her she was not going to be happy. It was setting itself up to be a lose/lose proposition.

I don’t need to go into all the details, but we turned her down for two reasons:
1. It became apparent that no one was going to make her happy. She didn’t even know what would make her happy.
2. We didn’t need the migraine. If you have been in business a while you probably already know what types of personalities work best with your business style. If not, it’s time you define your ideal customer’s behaviors and add this list to your target market description.

To begin, ask; "What do I need to consistently do my best work?" Clearly define the behaviors and qualities of your ideal client. Ideal client behavior lists could contain:

• their ethics and work habits
• how their personality blends with yours,
• the types of problems they face,
• their work culture or industry they work in,
• their desires and motivation,
• anything else that would be required to make working together successful.

This list will differ for all of us. It’s not worth taking on a particular type(s) of customers if it is only going to frustrate both you and the client, cost you time and money, and at worst damage your reputation.

Even if you really, really, really need that sale, still turn the prospect down. Once you start giving too much away or making concessions you are only going to lose. Know your bottom line. Know what you will and won’t do before you enter into any sales situation.

Download your weekly printable Action Quote. Best Work.pdf

P.S. A special treat for readers of our blog

Adam has created a special treat for all of you. He took our Sales Summit (mentioned in last week’s issue) and turned it into a nifty little Internet Sales Summit Process Calculator—with a title like that you can tell an engineer developed it—anyway, the Sales Summit Calculator allows you to calculate how many sales you can generate from a given number of prospects.

It is a free conversion calculator to help you estimate your market and sales success. It is developed around the Internet Sales process, but it works for any sales process, just imagine your own sales offer(s) titles.

It’s located at Sales Summit Calculator

If you like it and want to encourage our head engineer to play some more, drop him a note of encouragement. Thanks, hope you enjoy it!