80/20 Principle - Fire 20% of your clients!

The 80/20 Principle can apply to a lot of different things, especially on firing clients. This may seem counter intuitive, but hear me out. You spend your time and business development dollars to develop clients, but some may not be worth it financially and emotionally to you and your staff. Every year or so, list your clients by priority. Obviously the ones at the bottom of the list would be the clients that are difficult to work with, they take up extraneous amounts of your time, don't value you, etc. Look at the clients at the bottom of your list and cut the ones that drain more from you than you can receive back. If it's not a win-win situation, use your resources for bringing in better clients, or further developing the clients you have.

Book Review: Guerrilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson and Michael McLaughlin

Jay and Michael did a good job of introducing marketing (of the guerrilla sort) through this book. Although this is geared towards people working on their own as a consultant, many of the principles can be translated to your job even if you work for someone else. They have six principles that cover the majority of topics in this book:

• Insight-based marketing wins
• Guerrilla marketing is cohesive and coordinated
• Consulting is a contact sport
• High tech is high touch
• Focus on profits not fees
• One size fits none

This is a good addition to the Guerrilla array of books already provided by Jay Conrad Levinson.