Firing clients is not as arbitrarily wrong concept as it may seem. It is in fact quite natural that not every client you work with is actually bringing you any profit. Sure, they may be paying you money but the question is, are whether in spite of that they are worth your time and effort.
Not every client is equal. Some make ridiculous demands which consume all their fee. Others pay great money and you hardly have to lift a finger to earn it. The there are clients who only moan but hardly ever send you any worthwhile project.
The key for you is to find out which ones are which and focus only on the most profitable ones.
Want to find out how to do that? Read on.
Grading Your Clients
In order to find out which clients to focus your attention on, you need to start grading them. And, I know, the whole concept of grading clients may sound a little odd but believe me, it is the only way to stay profitable and sane at the same time.
To grade your clients, check your clients against the following:
Price
Make a list of every client you work with and see how much they are paying you. Are they paying your asking price or always haggle their way down. Also, how much money are they worth per year for you, roughly of course.
Prospect
Is the client bringing you any additional business from their own associates? A they giving you many referrals? Answer those questions about each of your clients.
How to Find Out Which Clients are Worth Working With – Tweet This!
Promotion
Do you get any prestige forwarding with the client? Are they a big brand that’s worth having on your books or just a small fish that no one hears about?
Pain
Answer to yourself how easy or difficult are they to work with. Do you constantly get grief from them or are they supportive, cooperative and understanding? Find out if working with the prospect is a pain or not, naturally, weed out all the pain ones, unless, they robing good money or lots of work in.
TIP: I personally prefer creating a table with my answers to the above questions, this way I can quickly see which clients are not worth any extra effort.
Making sure that you do not lose any money on clients is one of the greatest skills in business. Knowing which clients to focus your efforts in order to get a reorder makes it easy to increase your profit without having to exponentially grow your client base. Those two skills combined give you a solid base to build your business and profitable future client relations.
How to Make More Sales for Your Business
Bringing new business in is one of the most crucial aspect of every company. Without new clients and projects, your business will ultimately fail. The problem is though that many self employed people do not know how to make more sales and grow their businesses. They try various things but in reality, they hardly ever do the things they are supposed to do. In this post I want to outline to you the steps you need to take in order ot make more sales.
1. Identify your prospects. One of the most common mistakes many self employed people make is that they try to sell to everyone. They think that their next client is someone they are going to meet randomly, or someone who will stumble upon their website. In reality, selling to everyone is a sure recipe for a failure.
If you want to make more sales, you need to first identify whom do you want to sell to.
You may want to try and target businesses in a particular industry, niche or maybe geographic location. Or you may want to target companies of a certain size, revenue or type of operation. Figure out who your prospects are and selling will become much easier for you.
2. Find out what are their pain points. One of the key characteristics of your prospects is that they have to need what you offer. There is no point in selling childrens illustrations to a building industry, it will never work. However, there is more. Your prospect will not need all your services, they will have some common problems relating to what you sell and you need to find out what they are. We call them their pain points, and by knowing them you will also know what and how to sell to your prospects.
3. Get known as an expert in your field. People buy from people they know, or at least know of. If you want to make more sales, you need to become known as an expert in your field. Sure, it requires a lot of work but at the same time, it’s not that difficult. One of the best ways to achieve that is by writing a regular column in a publication read by your prospects. Or by writing your own blog. Giving talks during events attended by your prospects is another great way. The key is to get your name in front of your prospects before you even try to innitiate any selling process with them.
4. Study sales. Lastly, learn how to sell like a pro. Most business people omit this step, and it usually have some catastrophic consequences on their business. If you want to make more sales, learn how to do that professionally.
Selling is a science and you should study it everyday. Learn the basics of presenting to prospects. Learn how to write killer cold call emails and more. Without this knowledge, all your other efforts will be in vain.
Selling is not difficult. However, it is also not something you can just start doing without any prior preparation. Make sure that you will follow my advice above and you should learn how to make more sales really quickly.
Not every client is equal. Some make ridiculous demands which consume all their fee. Others pay great money and you hardly have to lift a finger to earn it. The there are clients who only moan but hardly ever send you any worthwhile project.
The key for you is to find out which ones are which and focus only on the most profitable ones.
Want to find out how to do that? Read on.
Grading Your Clients
In order to find out which clients to focus your attention on, you need to start grading them. And, I know, the whole concept of grading clients may sound a little odd but believe me, it is the only way to stay profitable and sane at the same time.
To grade your clients, check your clients against the following:
Price
Make a list of every client you work with and see how much they are paying you. Are they paying your asking price or always haggle their way down. Also, how much money are they worth per year for you, roughly of course.
Prospect
Is the client bringing you any additional business from their own associates? A they giving you many referrals? Answer those questions about each of your clients.
How to Find Out Which Clients are Worth Working With – Tweet This!
Promotion
Do you get any prestige forwarding with the client? Are they a big brand that’s worth having on your books or just a small fish that no one hears about?
Pain
Answer to yourself how easy or difficult are they to work with. Do you constantly get grief from them or are they supportive, cooperative and understanding? Find out if working with the prospect is a pain or not, naturally, weed out all the pain ones, unless, they robing good money or lots of work in.
TIP: I personally prefer creating a table with my answers to the above questions, this way I can quickly see which clients are not worth any extra effort.
Making sure that you do not lose any money on clients is one of the greatest skills in business. Knowing which clients to focus your efforts in order to get a reorder makes it easy to increase your profit without having to exponentially grow your client base. Those two skills combined give you a solid base to build your business and profitable future client relations.
How to Make More Sales for Your Business
Bringing new business in is one of the most crucial aspect of every company. Without new clients and projects, your business will ultimately fail. The problem is though that many self employed people do not know how to make more sales and grow their businesses. They try various things but in reality, they hardly ever do the things they are supposed to do. In this post I want to outline to you the steps you need to take in order ot make more sales.
1. Identify your prospects. One of the most common mistakes many self employed people make is that they try to sell to everyone. They think that their next client is someone they are going to meet randomly, or someone who will stumble upon their website. In reality, selling to everyone is a sure recipe for a failure.
If you want to make more sales, you need to first identify whom do you want to sell to.
You may want to try and target businesses in a particular industry, niche or maybe geographic location. Or you may want to target companies of a certain size, revenue or type of operation. Figure out who your prospects are and selling will become much easier for you.
2. Find out what are their pain points. One of the key characteristics of your prospects is that they have to need what you offer. There is no point in selling childrens illustrations to a building industry, it will never work. However, there is more. Your prospect will not need all your services, they will have some common problems relating to what you sell and you need to find out what they are. We call them their pain points, and by knowing them you will also know what and how to sell to your prospects.
3. Get known as an expert in your field. People buy from people they know, or at least know of. If you want to make more sales, you need to become known as an expert in your field. Sure, it requires a lot of work but at the same time, it’s not that difficult. One of the best ways to achieve that is by writing a regular column in a publication read by your prospects. Or by writing your own blog. Giving talks during events attended by your prospects is another great way. The key is to get your name in front of your prospects before you even try to innitiate any selling process with them.
4. Study sales. Lastly, learn how to sell like a pro. Most business people omit this step, and it usually have some catastrophic consequences on their business. If you want to make more sales, learn how to do that professionally.
Selling is a science and you should study it everyday. Learn the basics of presenting to prospects. Learn how to write killer cold call emails and more. Without this knowledge, all your other efforts will be in vain.
Selling is not difficult. However, it is also not something you can just start doing without any prior preparation. Make sure that you will follow my advice above and you should learn how to make more sales really quickly.
