Who will you choose to work with?

You’d think with all the literature, research, evidence etc out there that small business owners would know who their target customers were and what their needs are. And yet, still I went to a networking event the other day and heard a lady say that she could help “everyone”.

So, today I thought I’d turn the question around and ask who will you CHOOSE to work with?

You see, in any business there are several different types of clients:

1. There are people who expect everything to be free. In fact, they can’t believe you would possibly want to charge for your products or services. They will ask you for free advice and if you offer a free giveaway, they’ll be the first to take you up on it. But, they have absolutely no intention of every paying for your products and services.

2. Then there are people who will pay something, but it will always be a fairly low fee. They may buy one or two low cost products from you or possibly come to a few courses, but they won’t generally spend any more than that.

3. There are those who will then spend a medium amount with you. They like you, want to work with you and are generally fairly good payers.

4. And then of course, there are your top clients – those who think you’re wonderful, pay a top amount for what you do and come back to you time and time again.

Now, who do you want to work with?

Many of us dream of being able to help everyone, but of course everyone doesn’t actually pay the bills. And then we also dream of having a really successful business; one that brings us in lots of money and provides a great lifestyle. In order to have the two dreams, it’s not possible to work with everyone, so you’re going to need to focus on who you WANT to work with.

Here’s how I see it.

I personally would prefer to work with top clients and with medium clients. I like working with these people. They are generally nice to work with, pay well and on time and take action when it’s required.

Does that mean we won’t work with free or low payers? No, of course not. But with these groups, we will automate as much of the work as possible. That means that people can get things for free or for a low cost, but it’s not going to take a lot of work from our side and we can focus on where our attention should be – working with those that pay us.

After all, if you pay top whack for something, do you expect fantastic service and value for money? I do too and I want to make sure that is where my focus is.

So, today’s action – choose who you want to work with. Is it still everyone? Once you’ve decided, write down as much as you can about the group that you’ll be working with and then set about trying to find these people.