I do and you should too!
The Pareto Principle or the 80:20 rule decrees many things. As a business owner, you will be well aware that 80% of companies long term profits will come from 20% of clients. And 80% of wasted time will come from 20% of clients. Therefore it would be irresponsible for you to not turn down 20% of prospective clients, so that you can direct that time and energy to your long term clients - it’s a KPI of mine at TDMC.
I pride myself on having processes for everything. I also never want to grow my agency larger than managing 10 clients at a time. This is another reason why I proactively turn down clients. I do this so that I never have to dilute the quality of my service, and that I market a product which I have the utmost confidence in. This also maintains my high results, my reputation and therefore my client referrals - where I get most of my business and best clients from. And yes, I have a process for this too.
You want to build relationships, which means that you need to only work with companies that you believe that you can work with over the long term. So, on the rare occasion that I do reach out to a client, I have done my due diligence to make sure they’re the right fit for my agency, and that we can build on each other’s success. And being frank, I know that I can get them results in my sleep.
So what does my pre-qualification process look like? My favourite way of weeding out those unsavoury 20% of clients is if they’re late to the initial appointment, make repeated cancellations. Showing a lack of commitment on their part by asking for a discount. What they’re essentially telling me is that they don’t think that their product is good enough to bring results.
There’s a certain type of client who, because they understand a little bit about PPC, they will always look to trip you up. They actually want you to fail, to prove that they know better. They are usually also the client that thinks they own you. They think they know better and they actually want you to fail, in order to reinforce their limiting mindsets. They message you in the evenings and on the weekends. Yes, you know thype I’m talking about, and they never get my help.
The minute any of these aspects appear, that’s the end of the relationship right there and then. This method saves me so much time in the long run, if they can’t even be bothered to figure out scheduler or Zoom, then they, and most likely their businesses have far bigger issues.
So who are the clients I get results for over the long term? Clients that know exactly what it is that they want and work with me to get it. These clients won’t try to micromanage you and proactively sit back and watch you get them results. They’ll respect your time and space and keep appointments. Basically they sit back, invest a little money and even less time, and see a consistent inflow of passive income.