How to attract more of the clients you want to work with and less of the people you don’t?
When you first start out as an entrepreneur, you are enthusiastic and energetic. You are eager and ready to leap into the world of marketing yourself and your services to anyone and everyone who will listen.
In the initial stages, cash flow is top of mind – getting it and having enough of it to pay the bills. Consequently, we feel that we should market to everyone because everyone could be a potential customer, and we might lose out on potential income. Seems logical, but it’s actually counterintuitive from a marketing perspective (more on this another time). Having said that, sometimes we have to do what we need to do based on the circumstances at the time.
In the later stages and with more experience under our belt, we come to recognize a particular type of person we prefer working with. Not only do we prefer them, but we acknowledge we can be our better selves and do our best work with them; serving their needs and satisfying ours.
Other clients, the ones we don’t favour, can sometimes become known by us as “nightmare” clients. You know the ones. Those who don’t want to pay you what you’re worth, those who are high maintenance with tons of special requests, the ones who push the limits of your time and patience, or who disappear and leave you in the lurch in the middle of an unfinished project.
In reality, we are attracting those so-called nightmare clients to begin with, which means we need to change what we put out there, in order to get back a different result.
Here are six tips to eliminate nightmare clients and attract your best customers.
- Step into your power. Know what you are worth and don’t settle for less.
- Talk about budgets and expectations up front. Lay it all out on the table.
- Value alignment. If your values don’t align with your customer’s values, don’t force it.
- Know when to walk away. It has to be a win-win situation for both sides.
- Be honest. If you don’t feel that you or your client is being set up for success in the working relationship, let them go.
- Create your rules of engagement. A list of the qualities, mind set, and attitude of the people you want to work with. This is a mental checklist you can use to evaluate your prospect.
Stop attracting nightmare clients by changing what you put out there, to get back a different result.
Which ones have I missed? What are some of the ways you attract your best customers? I would love to know! Please share your tips in the comment box, or drop me a note on Facebook.
Wonderful topic, Michelle. I have learned from business training (and the hard way) that you either control your business, or your clients will. Since then I applied two of the principles you mentioned; point 5 and 6.
Walking away is still a bit of a challenge sometimes, however, the most fascinating thing is that virtually every time I walk away from, what I thought was, a prospect, a new one shows up.
In my experience, knowing one’s business values are paramount in conducting business as much as personal values. And some values dictates that some “type” of clients need to go away.
This helped me free more of my energy to working with people I actually ENJOY working with.
Love how timely this post is, Michelle 🙂
Thanks so much for your feedback Mazen! I’m thrilled you found this post relevant and timely 🙂 I agree with your comment about knowing one’s business and personal values. If we are clear about ‘our manifesto’ it’s a very powerful tool for conducting business; and can truly be used as a guide for making business decisions about who to target, what to offer, and how to position ourselves. To your continued success! Michelle