Attracting Your Ideal Clients - Part 1

By Robert Middleton - Action Plan Marketing

My definition of a perfect Independent Professional business is when you are paid well to work with ideal clients you love.

For many this is an elusive goal.

Sometimes we attain half of the equation - we work with great clients who can't pay us much or we work with difficult clients who pay us well. The nightmare is working working with clients who not only can't pay us well but are also a pain in the you-know-what to work with.

I worked with a client like that several years ago. Her needs were many and her mode of working drove me a little crazy. I developed a lot of marketing materials for her and she had this habit of calling me and then insisting on editing these materials by phone.

It was a great way to practice patience!

I charged by the hour back then and I never felt appreciated for what I was doing for her. These intense phone sessions where we went over every word about ten times before she was satisfied were very stressful.

Even when I took her on, I knew it was going to be tough. Her communication style was abrasive and she was also very needy.

But I prided myself on being able to work with difficult clients and I have to admit I learned a lot in the process. I still did all I could to help her promote her services effectively and we had some great results over the years we worked together.

But something had to give. I got tired of being the whipping boy of my clients. I had to take control.

I had the opportunity when I met with a new client to discuss their web site development. In the meeting the client did nothing but talk; I could barely fit a word in edgewise.

After the meeting I felt a foreboding of doom. This was going to be a difficult client. He wasn't going to listen. If I sent him drafts of my designs he would not be responsive; I'd seen it before and I didn't want to go through it again.

So I took a risk and wrote him an email.

I told him that I was concerned with the meeting, that we had not really had the chance to focus on the direction of the web site, and that if it was going to go successfully, we'd have to do it my way. And I laid out a specific approach for development.

His response email was a relief.

He told me he was completely willing to do things my way in order to get a high-quality web site. He was ready to begin. And the great news is that he turned into an excellent and responsive client. We finished the web site in record time and he did everything I asked him to do. He paid me well, too!

Ultimately it took me a few years to discover and implement the approaches that virtually guaranteed great clients every single time - ones who were not only fun and stimulating to work with but who paid me what I was worth.

I'll share some of these approaches with you next week.

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The More Clients Bottom Line: In order to start attracting the ideal clients to your business, first you need to be sick and tired of the kind of clients you're attracting now. You need to approach attracting clients differently and it starts with clearly stating what kind of clients you want and the conditions that must be met in order for you to work with them.

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Do you have any stories of clients that drove you crazy? Please share your answer on the More Clients Blog by clicking on the Comments link below.

Comments

[Raj Menon]

Change request is one of the challenges of any project. Version control is very important for all to be on the same page. This process has to be defined before the start of the project. In spite of this we had problems due to lack of clarity of the client

[Christine Baker]

Robert,

When reading your case study I found myself nodding in reminiscence. I had a client a couple of years ago who used to ring me at all hours of the night, (literally) agree to my ideas initially, but then unpick everything I did. Result? The organization has lost some great people who wanted to do things my way but found their boss (my client) was going in the opposite direction. It was so sad to observe. Oh, and I should have charged her far more for the hassle!
I now check, at the outset, for the client's emotional commitment to the changes in management practices I propose. It's up to them, not me, to implement and sustain changes and that's been an important learning point for me.

[Linkama.wordpress.com]

Not long ago, I had an experience pretty similar to your example #2. Unfortunately, it ended unsuccessfully.

The assignment was to compile a coherent instructive publication from disparate pieces of information. The problem for me was the flood of bits and pieces that needed to be inserted into the flow of the publication but were changed while I was busy working with the previous versions. The client also insisted on frequent follow-up meetings, during which I often had no progress to show because of the impossibility of organizing the information within the available time frame.

I finally called a time-out to be able to put together one master document for keeping tabs on the changes -- in principle, telling the client that 1) I needed a little time to sort out the mess, 2) we should work on one single master document instead of dozens of files whose versions nobody could track, and 3) based on point 1, we needed to reschedule the follow-up meetings.

I was declared uncooperative and my performance below par. I tried to explain my reasoning in a couple of emails, but they were never responded to.

In hindsight, it was probably better that the project didn't go ahead, although it felt really bad at the time.

Lesson learned: whenever there's the slightest possibility that a client or project may turn difficult, try to level the playing field immediately. When you're deep inside the project, the client will interpret any change from his expected process as a threat to the project or himself.