Not all business is good business. There are some customers that can be time-consuming and costly to work with. They may be unreasonably demanding, they may fail to pay you on time or they may fail to cooperate with rules and requests that you’ve laid out for them. In other cases, they may simply not be the ideal demographic – you may pride yourself as a specialist, and yet may continuously find yourself attracting clients wanting routine services or general products.
Whatever the case may be, you shouldn’t have to put up with these customers. Here are just a few ways to start attracting the customers that you want.
Market Yourself Correctly
Poor marketing could result in you attracting the wrong sorts of customers. Signs of unprofessionalism could prevent you from attracting those top clients – such signs could include amateurish web design, spelling mistakes or inconsistent branding. If you’ve largely relied on DIY marketing, consider whether it’s time to hire professionals to handle tasks such as content writing and graphic design.
Alternatively, if you’ve been attracting the wrong demographics, consider whether you need to hire an SEO & PPC company to refocus your marketing. Make sure that you’re also not making any false claims as to what you can provide for customers (this will eliminate the demanding customers).
Adjust Your Pricing
Your pricing could be causing you to attract the wrong customers. If your pricing is too low, you could find yourself attracting those more basic customers simply looking for a cheap deal. If your pricing is too high, you’ll find yourself attracting more demanding customers looking for specialist high-quality services.
You could consider conducting surveys on consumers to get an idea of what they think of your pricing and the expectations that come with it. If customers receive individual quotes, you may be able to offer personalised quotes based on how difficult a customer if likely to be – offering high quotes to customers you don’t want to work with could be a way of driving them away, but it could backfire.
Know When to Screen Customers
Screening procedures can sometimes be necessary for sifting out the wrong type of customers. A popular screening procedure is a credit check – if customers are going to be paying you on a consistent basis, you need to know how good they are at paying bills on time and a credit check is the best way of knowing this. Other procedures that you can use could include getting customers to sign contracts, show ID or even adhere to a dress code.
Learn to Say No
If you get a bad feeling about a customer, you can turn them away. Telling a customer that you’re too busy or fully booked is often the easy way out. Alternatively, you could tell the truth and possibly suggest another company for them to use. Always be polite – if you end up offending a client, they could leave a negative review or even seek legal action. Don’t leave requests unanswered either as this ignorance could also cause a customer to take offence.
