The Good Practice Of Turning Down Ready-To-Buy Prospects?!

Over at Ford Harding's blog I bumped into a great story entitled The Amazing Flip. It tells the story of a firm that basically requires prospects to sell their opportunities to the firm. The firm's default setting of sitting down with prospects is "No," unless prospects can sell their projects to the firm.

It doesn't specifically show from the article, but I can assume that the firm is fully booked with top-notch clients. So, the universal truth is really true that nature abhors vacuum, and if we chase away bad prospects, the n we automatically give way to great prospects and great clients.

The problem I see is that in most consulting firms, rainmakers are not allowed to turn down business. Since so many firms operate on the hooker's mantra of "We do anything for anyone for money," this can be a hard proposition.

In my employment years I was fired twice for rejecting inappropriate prospects. They were either verbally abusive or went a bit too far on haggling. My sales managers told me my job was to turn every hunk of warm meat with a wallet into paying clients.

However, if we consider how much bad clients can cost a firm , this proposition sounds rather practical. Ron Baker at the Verasage Institute rightly says: "Bad clients drive out good clients."

My personal belief is that no clients are better than bad clients. If we have no clients at all, at least we know where we stand and can make alternative plans for the mortgage payment and putting food on the table. But if we are flooded with obnoxious, belligerent ambiguous clients, we never know what can happen next. I've had my fair share of them and probably you too. So, let's be more selective of whom we accept as clients.

Anyway, this is a great article, so go an read the The Amazing Flip.