4 Ways to Weed Out Rotten Clients and Grow Your Business

grow a successful business, you need best, most-promising customers. But you can't effectively serve 100 completely different clients. Some have to go, and you've to give them the boot. I liken the process to of the giant-pumpkin growers. They follow the kill/nurture process and turn prizewinner after prizewinner.

Removing less-promising pumpkins the vine is standard operating procedure those farmers. There is no mercy here, "Aw shucks, it may grow big one day." They just kill it -- fast. This is the system I followed helped me build my own multimillion dollar companies. And if you nothing else, this process will help grow your business and get life back.

You might thinking, "I cannot afford to lose a client, so I'll just focus growing my relationships my top clients."

Buzzzzzz! (That's the sound of my annoying game-show buzzer going .) You can't devote yourself everyone all the time. When you keep rotten clients, you can't the work needed to grow those good relationships.

It's to remove the diseased pumpkins so your top clients, and other new clients, can blossom. If this step freaks you , find the client who is the biggest pain and , when fired, will have the financial impact on your business. Fire that one first.

If you're still feeling nervous, remember, you can always go to the jerk. They'll give you the old "I told you ," take you back, and treat you like garbage, as they before. So know this, if I wrong (which I'm not), you can easily get diseased clients (which you shouldn't) . . . if you want to (which you won't).

So how do you fire a client? are four ways to do it, without straight-up telling them.

1. Eliminate services. To get of clients who are downright nasty, just telling them you no offer one service so they don't back and ask for your other services may not work; you may to go about it differently. For , you might eliminate a specific service or servicing a specific type of company (the same type of company your sucky client has . . . a coincidence). To do this, use the industry expertise trick. Explain "We have shifted all of our resources to serve an industry than yours, and we can no longer help ."

2. Prioritize the stars. When the good clients call, they get serviced first. The cringe- worthy clients pushed to the back of the line. When you're the phone with a cringemeister and a star client calls, (politely) hang up on the cringe client and move to the good guy. The cringers will the hint. Sure, it's a little bit Mean Girls, but it gets the done.

3. Raise prices. If you really to see bad clients run for the , raise your prices. And I don't mean a measly 10 or 20 percent. Increase fees until it becomes prohibitive for the client. rare cases, some clients will just to the occasion, paying you seriously good money just to keep working you. Now they can't afford you failing, so they'll likely all nicey-nice and help you.

4. Refuse to two-time. Another way of breaking with a diseased client is to say you have an agreement a major client that prohibits you from servicing them longer. I am not suggesting you actually create a contract; the goal is to have explanation for the break. give your major client a heads-—and get their nod of approval—that you are going pin your breakup with a bad client serving them (your good guy) better.

After you're through the awful clients, it's time to rid of the ones who simply aren't a good fit. Even great, friendly customers need to go if they are unfit for your offering. When the nice folks want to business with you, but are unfit, introduce to another vendor who can serve them. are giving them great service by introducing them to someone who is the right fit.

Remember, just in a pumpkin patch, weeding is a constant process. Companies change and clients come and . Block off a day or to evaluate customers and the tough decisions. You never know when a pesky weed or diseased pumpkin might worm its in and take over your entire patch.


Adapted from: entrepreneur.com, June 26, 2012.