Firms are often hesitant to choose a target market because they think they will lose out on all the other business they might get otherwise. I blogged a few weeks ago about why choosing a target market is essential to sound marketing strategy for marketing reasons. Today, I’d like to explore it from a slightly different angle – why working with ideal clients is so much more fulfilling than taking on any client who needs your service.
We’ve all had clients that have been royal pain in the butts. Those people you dread calling because you know nothing will ever be good enough, or they want you to discount your services to trim your already razor thin margins, or they keep changing their deadline to “yesterday.”
Then you have ideal clients who are an absolute pleasure to work with. They always have a positive mentality, keep you in the loop, click with you on a personal level, and are willing to work as your business partner to get things done.
And finally, you have those clients that are ok to work with. You might not love working with them but you don’t find them unpleasant.
David Maister discusses this issue in his excellent book, True Professionalism.
Think about all the clients you have served in the past year, and divide them into three categories. Category 1 is “I like these people, and their industry interests me…” category 2 is “I can tolerate these people and their business is OK – neither fascinating nor boring.” Category 3 is “I’m professional enough that I would never say this to them, and I’ll still do my best for them, but the truth is that these are not my kind of people and I have no interest in their industry.”
According to Maister, most professionals have about 30-35% of their clients in Category 1, 50-60% in Category 2, ad 5-20% in Category 3.
Now, which would you rather work with? It’s a no brainer, right? But how in the world can you get the clients you want and reject work from clients you would rather stay the heck away from if you had that option?
More than money, more than volume, more in fact than anything else, an individual professional should be involved in marketing for one reason above all: The better you are at marketing, the better the chance you have to work on the fun stuff, and the less trapped you become in being forced to take on work and clients you don’t truly enjoy, simply to “feed the baby.”
However, I must report that a common reaction among professionals to the percentages given above is to think that those numbers are inevitable (ie that they accurately measure how much excitement professional life has to offer). “Most of professional work is routine and most of the clients are uninteresting,” I’m told. My reaction is “I’ll readily concede that there’s boring work for dull clients out there, but the question is, ‘Why do you have to do it?” The next sentence I hear is “But do I have a choice?”
The answer is “Of course you do!” Unless you dislike all clients and all of their matters (in which case you should reconsider your chosen profession), we are only talking about exercising some discretion and energy in influencing what you work on. Supposedly, professionals are among society’s most bright, educated, and elite members – people who are supposed to have more career choices than anyone else. Yet they seem to be willing to accept a work life made up largely of “I can tolerate it” work and clients, and they feel that they cannot safely do anything about all that.”
Marketing’s greatest benefit is to bring in clients you enjoy working with to work on projects that interest you! By picking a target market, you actively seek out these types of clients.
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