Seth Godin recently published a great blog post on winning the fight and losing the customer and it prompted me to think about clients I’ve “lost” over the years.

With very few exceptions, each “loss” turned out to be a bigger win.

Either a new client came on board or profits increased or some other overall win happened for the business.

What I realized is that these “losses” simply weren’t my ideal clients long term.

Some clients start out as ideal, but as they change, and you change, your paths diverge and that’s totally okay — it doesn’t make either side “wrong” or a “loser”, it just means that you’re no longer a good fit.

There are plenty of other clients out there with whom you are a great fit.

To know whether you’re a good fit for each other, try this simple test:

When you see an email from them, do you happily open or do you think “what now”?

The answer to that one question will tell you whether or not this person is a good fit for your business.

Related Posts

• Why More Clients May Not Be the Missing Piece of the Puzzle
• Losing My Focus — and You
• Solopreneurs: Are You Losing Potential Clients?
• Common Courtesy as a Client Magnet
• Small Business Coaching: 60 client-magnetic seconds

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 12th, 2009 at 12:30 pm and is filed under Solo Entrepreneur Challenges, The SELF of Self Employment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

About the Author
For the past 5 years, Sandra Martini has been showing self-employed business owners how to get more clients consistently by implementing processes and systems to put their marketing on autopilot. Visit Sandra at http://www.SandraMartini.com for details, compelling client testimonials and her free audio series "5 Simple and Easy Steps to Put Your Marketing on Autopilot".