The Desert of Arizona
Sunny 57 Degrees
We talk a lot in this Client Letter about attracting clients.
Once you have your systems built, you quickly realize, that’s the easy part.
Keeping clients is an entirely different matter.
The more great clients you keep, the better your life becomes.
So how do you “keep” clients?
Well, like client attraction, you want them to want to stay around. So coercion, manipulation, top secret marketing tricks… all that crap just isn’t a smart move.
I’ve tried a lot of things over the years.
Being nice doesn’t cut it…
Finishing projects on time doesn’t cut it…
Apparently, dashing good looks aren’t even enough!
There’s one thing I’ve found that DOES work.
That thing is to make sure you are a good deal.
Now good deal doesn’t mean cheap. Being a good deal means the value you send out is WELL worth the money they pay. Being a good deal means it’s not even CLOSE.
You might think this has to do with how well you do your service or with how much you charge.
Kind of.
It has more to do with choosing the right clients.
You want to be solving problems for clients that are WELL worth the fees paid.
There are basically 3 variables you can play around with:
- The problems you solve for clients. (You adjust the size you aim for so it makes you a good deal.)
- The clients for whom you solve those problems.
- The fees you charge for the solutions.
If you think about it, you can plot out these points on a “Good Deal Matrix.”
You want to be a good deal. But that really has nothing to do with how many zeros are in your fee.
It has to do with how the value you provide is PERCEIVED.