Are They Worth It?

My hairdresser has an uncanny ability to deliver the best one-liners. She doesn't necessarily mean them to be funny, but they are. More importantly, her one-liners are incredibly insightful. Thanks to those two facts, my jaw hit the floor when I had my hair done this weekend - both in laughter and at her incredible insight into business.

When I got to her salon Saturday, she was madder than a wet hen. Turns out that she had just fired the customer immediately before me. That customer was just wrong on so many levels, so as soon as my hairdresser finished up the woman's hair color, she sent her packing and told her not to come back.

After telling me all of the juicy details, she summed the whole situation up with...

If I'm going to suffer for you, you better be worth it. 

So, I ask you... 

Do you have clients that aren't worth it? 

I bet 90% of you came up with at least one name.

The clients that fit in this category are those who:

• Want you to use different software or different processes just for them
• Ignore your requests for documents
• Argue about how you should do your job
• Ask for your advice and then don't follow it
• Argue about your fees and/or don't pay on time
• ??? Fill in the blank

In other words, these are the clients who simply don't afford you the respect you deserve as a valuable contributor to the health and wealth of their companies. They take you for granted. 

You have suffered for them.

Earlier this year, I wrote an article about what accountants and bookkeepers just like you have done for your clients during the pandemic. In that article, I called you heroes. And you are a hero. While you crunch away at their numbers, you are the backbone holding small business together. You give up family time. You forgo your own health. You do their books before you even do your own. 

You suffer for your clients. So, I challenge you to make sure that all of your clients are worth suffering for. 

How do you make sure your clients are worth suffering for? 

Step 1: Identify your "ideal client." Think about those clients you love to work with. What makes those such enjoyable working relationships? Think about those dreaded clients that make you cringe whenever you see their names. What makes those such awful working relationships? Some of the attributes will be related to the type of business, some around how they operate their business, and some will even be personality traits. 

Drop those attributes into three different attribute categories:

• "Have to Have"
• "Want to Have" 
• "Deal Breaker"

Step 2: Rate each client. Assign point values to each attribute, with "Deal Breakers" having a negative value. Then rate each client based on the specific attributes you defined (both positive and negative). This rating and ranking will help you place each client into one of three buckets:

• Ideal
• Marginal
• Non-Ideal

Step 3: Market to have the business you want. Marketing isn't just about growth. It is about building a pool of potential clients that want to work with you. Then YOU choose the best out of the pool - the ones who fit your ideal client profile with all of the "Have to Have" attributes, many of the "Want to Have" attributes, and absolutely NO "Deal Breaker" attributes. 

Step 4: Replace non-ideal clients. As you engage more ideal clients, you can begin to weed out the worst clients. "Firing" clients shouldn't be the first step (unless you have identified a reason to end the relationship immediately). Instead, look to do what Patricia Hendrix, Director of Woodard Institute says, "Migrate those clients out the back door." Step 4 shouldn't be a cliff's edge; instead, it should be a process. 

You can build a practice that will allow you to migrate the non-ideal clients out the back door AND keep your front door only open a bit - so you only work with the best of the best.