My Favourite Client


During one of our January workshops in Regina, we had a discussion about our ‘ideal clients’ vs. our ‘favourite clients’. I look on them as being the same thing but I discovered that this isn’t true for everyone.

It became evident during our chat that there was one very specific defining characteristic that made some clients ‘ideal’ but not ‘favourite’. Can you guess what that was? Money.

Once we got past financial gain and started talking about our favourite clients, another word kept coming up over and over again. That word was TRUST. Almost everyone mentioned it… wanting their clients to trust them and being able to trust their clients.

Do you have an important client that’s a real pain to work with but brings in half of your income? I’m not suggesting you should dump them. Not by a long shot. Some of those ideal client characteristics pull more weight than others and that will be different for each of us.

Last summer I sat down and listed 10 characteristics of our ideal client. Not one of our current clients fits that profile 100%. But 80% of them are at/over 8 out of 10. We think that’s pretty darn good. We love our jobs because we love our clients!

If your ideal client is not your favourite client, how can you bring them closer together?



Originally published in Work Better, Not Harder on February 12, 2013 

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