Let’s consider the rather controversial step of eliminating customers who are a waste of time and energy.
Get Rid of the Time Stealers
Every business owner I meet needs to master their time. They should be obsessed with how to use their most valuable resource – their time.
They must learn how to chop 10 hours of their typical work week without sacrificing any income. It takes time, but it’s not as difficult as most people think.
The first rule of any time management system is to make the most out of the time you are allotted. Two of the best books for time management skills are ‘ Eat That Frog‘ by Brian Tracy and ‘ Essentialism‘ by Greg Mc Keown.
Your initial task is to eliminate unnecessary or redundant labour. Make this the frog that you eat tomorrow. Brian Tracy is so right when he says that if you tackle the less attractive job first thing (the frog), the rest of the day seems like a breeze by comparison.
We need to preserve the time that we have because it’s the one resource you can never get back. Time is money.
This brings us to the rather controversial first step of eliminating customers who are a waste of time and energy. Think of them as shoplifters who specialize in stealing our by the time.
We need to either get rid of them or transform them into paying customers who proactively feed the bottom line. While this approach may sound shocking to many entrepreneurs, it is a practical and essential step in the process.
Thus, to have the appearance of gaining extra hours, one of my suggestions to my clients early on in our work together is that they fire extraneous customers.
Let Your Most Needy Customers (and Your Most Unprofitable) Become Your Competitor’s Headache
Some clients simply aren’t worth your time. They don’t pay invoices on time. They never stop complaining about trivial details. And they tie up all of the employees in your business. Dealing with them costs precious hours and money while offering nothing in return.
Spend 80% of Your Time With Your Best Customers – Not the Other Way Around
It’s a smart business policy to fire them, and instead focus on customers who deserve your attention. These are the people who respond with loyalty and profitable transactions.
Sometimes ‘get getting rid of customers’ involves deleting dead-end leads from the client database. Other times it means sending selected clients down the road to a competitor and thus to a more appropriate business that matches their price demands. In many cases, it means that the business has to re examine its products and services.
The entrepreneur may need also to eliminate the products or service magnets that are attracting these unwanted customers.
For example, businesses frequently offer too many discounts, freebies or products that are not related to the core business model.
Instead concentrate on the services and products that produce profits and jettison the dead weight of the products and services that don’t contribute their share to bottom line,
Spin off those lines as a stand alone business or sell them to another entrepreneur. Upgrade clients to premium versions that offer higher profit margins.
Profit is both the ultimate end goal and the important barometer of success. Strong lean companies are not financially anemic. They are streamlined for making more money with less time and effort in any economic environment.
