When I decided to stop working for someone’s else company and joined my brothers’ business, who had started it some years ago, acquiring new clients was a subject that I was concerned about. This was obvious because as other entrepreneurships if we weren’t able to get new client our business was not going to have a good future. Therefore at that time I thought that every single client was valuable, but over time I learned that this is not necessarily true and that there are clients that our company don’t want to have.
Our company Consultorías 360° is a business that advices other companies in the subject of technologies and Internet, so that their presence in this media is strategic and successful today and in the future. As you can see, this is a service that transfers knowledge, or in other words it is an intangible. These types of services are difficult to valuate for two reasons: in our market, there aren’t a lot of companies that offer this service and as it is an intangible it is difficult to understand the value of this work.
Even though we understand what I have just written, we have come to the conclusion that we are only interested in working with companies and businessmen that understand that intangibles have a huge value as well. That is the reason why we have let through clients that we see that they don’t value knowledge, as it should be valued. Also we have decided not to work with difficult people, and with people that are not open to new ideas, because this will turn into a difficult work, taking into account that we are going to have to see this people at least twice a week.
That is our case where we are selling an intangible, but it is a subject all companies should understand: not every client is a good client –at least for our company-. I am going to mention other cases you might find familiar: the one that bothers a lot and returns our product many times, the client that doesn’t pay when he is supposed to pay, the client that pays over 160 days, the client that buys few products and not the number of products we need to sell per client, etc.
The point is that as an entrepreneur you must define which type of clients you want to serve and which ones are going to damage your company and even your health and peacefulness. Some times we learn this as you go, but the important thing is once you detect it you should walk away from this clients, and instead try to use this time and energy searching for good clients.
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