“How can I get more clients for my practice?”

…is a question I always been asked, when helping a professional firm to grow their practice.

But actually they are asking another question (or they should):

“How can I get more RIGHT clients for my practice?”

So my first reply is asking them a question. I want to ask you as well:

Do you have in your practice a strategy to select your best-fit right clients?

If not, so how do you do know how to select the clients that fit with your practice and those who are not?

One thing for sure, if you never addressed this issue, you’re probably damaging the growth of your own practice in the short and defiantly in the long term.

Let me explain.

The Essence of selecting the RIGHT customers

Having a process to select your right clients for your practice is essential.

Most professionals (especially in a down economy) are willing to take just about any client and/or project that comes through the door.

After all, if someone is willing to give you money, why turn them away, right?

Wrong.

Unfortunately, this line of thinking actually hurts the bottom line of your practice.

Let’s take your practice as an example.

Do you agree that in your current practice each new client that join you represents a tremendous opportunity?

New clients mean new streams of revenue, new ambassadors for your practice that can generate new referrals in the future.

Even better, really great clients help us become better professionals, as we learn from their success (or failure), experience and knowledge.

Avoid the risk and embrace the opportunity

Many of us know that new clients mean also the need to invest more time, energy and resources within your practice.

Successful professionals use their business development time to invest in existing clients, to know them better, they wish, their needs etc.

You also probably invest as a professional a lot of thinking time or a mental investment in your clients.

But if the client is a right client, this investment pays off 10x more.

In contrast, when a client is a poor fit for your practice and the relationship is a struggle, most (or all) of that initial business development investment is wasted.

You find yourself spending a lot of valuable time to only to put out fires with these clients.

Pity, since your time is your biggest commodity…

…And It’s also just not fun.

When the relationship with the non-fit clients finally comes to an end, you often do not get any referrals and “follow-on work”.

A pure lose-lose scenario.

Learn to say “No”

In my experience of helping many professional grow their practice, I learned that many professionals have a problem with saying “No.”

Look at it this way:

Saying “no” to poor-fit clients means having more time and energy to say “yes” to good-fit clients.

This single decision will SWITCH your practice to make it more efficient, and to turn relationships to more referrals and revenue.

To help you understand it, even more, let’s do a small exercise together.

[I actually learned this exercise many years ago when I looked to make changes in my own professional practice then. It works!].

(1) Get a piece of paper (or use an excel sheet on your computer) and draw 3 columns.

(2)  In the first column list your current clients in order their profitability – most profitable at the top, least profitable at the bottom.

(3) In the second column, write the annual revenue the client brings to your practice.

(4) Use the third column to apply adjectives to each client (ex: joyful, easygoing, loyal, energy boosting, pleasant, fun, energy draining, untrusting, etc.)

(5) Now go back and circle all of the clients that have negative adjectives.

[Go do this exercise before continue reading the below…]

What is a very interesting and clear from this exercise – there is a direct link between the great clients (those you gave positive adjectives) to the most PROFITABLE clients in your practice (don’t confuse this with gross revenue!).

Your business development activities will be fun and joyful when you spend your time selecting the clients you want to work with.

The Process to select the Right Clients

To find your RIGHT client we need to create a process within your practice.

It is easier than you think, but you need to be willing to dedicate time to work on it [I will be happy to help if needed!]

Here is the process, in short, I warmly recommend you to adopt it in your practice:

Step #1: Research

The first step is to create a small research.

You want to check the list of your clients in the last 12-18 months.

Of those clients, which were a pleasure to work with?

Why? What is the reason those clients decided to work with you?  Who were the most profitable?

The answers to these important questions will give you the first important clues of who are the RIGHT clients.

Tip: You may want to add to your research also some qualitative information about your former clients. 

Information like: What are these good-fit clients interests? What do they like to do in their free time? Etc.

This sort of information will help you also to know WHERE and WHEN can you look for your typical good-fit clients and get connected to them.

Remark: this is relevant to business development efforts of finding the right clients both offline as well as online.

Step #2: Commit

The answers you have gathered are a list of criteria, any of the future clients of your practice should fulfill (or at least the majority of the points).

So your next step in creating your process to find the right clients is to commit to using the criteria you just defined as your new rulebook for accepting new clients.

In other words, If a new potential client doesn’t fit, then respectfully decline from accepting them.

Step #3: Act & clean

Now, the next step is two folded.

First, you need to continue, on a regular basis, to find other potential clients like the good-fit clients.

You want to replicate and get new clients like your most profitable, best -fit clients.

This should be a clear guidance for many of your business development activities with your practice.

The second part is a bit more difficult.

Over the next 12 months let go of the non-good-fit clients that you still serve.

Yes, get rid of them!

I am aware that it is one of the hardest things you will have to do…

…but in the end of the process it will be definitely rewarding.

(I know, I did it with so many of my clients!)

Trust me.

Having a practice full with clients who appreciate and respect the work that you do for them and are a great fit for your business development goals – should be your ultimate goal.

It is one of the most important business development activity you can take within your practice.

Finding the perfect process for your practice can take some testing, but once you find the right one, you’ll know that your business development time of finding the right clients is spent wisely and will get more results for your practice.

I know that your next (natural) question is –

“ok great, I am getting in front of the right clients but how do I engage them and make them my clients?”

I will leave the answer(s) to this question to be a subject of a new future post.

But for now, I am happy that you got a process to find the right clients to your practice.

Poor-fit not bad: it’s all relative

What we’ve written so far is focused on preparing to reach more clients, but once you have your process, it’s time to act.

The most obvious approach is to reach out directly on your own.

And when you don’t have time to do it, you can outsource that work to me and my SWITCH team, we will be happy to help.

As a parting thought I’d like to share why I’ve talked about “poor-fit” clients and avoided talking about “bad clients” in this post.

Certainly, there are truly “bad” clients in the market.

Maybe you had experience with one of them. They’re unethical, disrespectful, dishonest, etc.

However, the majority of clients have good intentions and truly looking for a good professionals to help with their needs.

Your goal, as a professional, is to identify those clients that align and a good-fit with your services and values.

They’re with no doubt your BEST clients and will lead to long-term success of your practice.

Point.

What is your way to select and attract the right clients to your practice? Please share.