The Best Deal

There is a saying in business that goes like this.... "sometimes the best deal you made was the one you didn't". In other words, it's the deal you turned away or left on the table. It's always tempting to take on every single deal that comes your way in business due to the woo of possible profits related to it, but I would advise to you closely look at every deal to ensure the prospect fits your criteria and will truly be profitable for you.

This may mean that if something doesn't feel right about a deal or the prospect is being difficult upfront or it's outside of your core competency or or or... etc, well you may need to get up and walk away from it for the sake of your company. It most likely will be for the best saving you and your company huge amounts of wasted time and effort not to mention money.

One of the most profitable angles in business is knowing who your target public (audience) is and who is a desirable client to take on and who isn't. If you can peg who isn't you will avoid 90% of all headaches for your company. The ability to spot problem child's early is a vital tool toward a growing and profitable company. Sure, you may end up leaving a few perfectly good deals on the table but you don't need to worry about that. Focus on distilling the deals that don't fully align with your goals, purposes and policies and I assure you that you will be ultimately more profitable and happier.

I have found that the very clients that fall just outside of our core public in one way or the other try to actually sell us on taking them on when all of our instincts and observations are indicating that we shouldn't. One for one, every time we have violated our polices and our instincts we have ended up unhappy about it later so my advice is save yourself the headaches and weed out the possible problem clients early. Don't be reasonable about this. Be ruthless about it. There are absolute hoards of new business out there, why waste your time with the deadwood.

If you currently have problem clients that fall outside of your core public or don't qualify in one way or the other, do yourself a favor and resign them. Move them off the line and focus all of your best talent, time and energy on your key clients to ensure they are happy and being serviced well. Take good care of your qualified clients and work to add more just like them. Do this and you will see the overall morale of your company improve. At our agency, we try to take on clients that fit our target public exactly and have products or services we like. We also try to only work with people we like and if we find a client being difficult or rude to our people, we simply resign the account and move onward and upward. Give it a try.

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group