As you take on an advisory role in your firm, you are still going to be working with all of your older clients. Some of these clients may be your ideal clients, while others will no longer fit within the business model you are trying to create. It is best to rate all of your clients sooner than later. This will ensure you know who meets your current criteria, who can meet your new criteria, and who you need to let go as a client.
How to Rate Your Current Clients to Determine if They are Ideal Clients
Rating your clients is going to be easier than you think. All you need to do is create a spreadsheet. On the left-hand side of the spreadsheet, you will want to list all of your clients. I recommend listing them from highest revenue to lowest revenue.
Once you have all of your clients listed, you can create columns for those items that may be important to you. There are no right or wrong items to place in these columns, but the items I recommend include:
- Is the Client Responsive
- Does the Client Communicate Well
- Does the Client Pay Their Invoices on Time
- Is the Owner Involved
- Does the Client Show Up to Meetings
- Does the Client Refer You to Others
- Is the Client a Nice Person
- Are You Constantly Requesting and Searching for Information from the Client
As soon as you have all of your columns in place, you can give a rating of 1-10 in every column for each client. After you have rated all of your clients’ columns, you can add the columns up to see where each client stands.
Results of Rating Your Clients
If you happen to have ten columns for each client, you could potentially have a client with a rating of 100. But that will rarely happen, because every client has that one thing they don’t do well. So, don’t panic if you don’t see any 100s, because you can still have amazing clients.
A score of 61-80 is what I normally look for in ideal clients. If a client has a score of 41-60, they have the potential of becoming an ideal client. All you need to do is find a way to help them with increasing their rating.
A client with a rating of 21-40 may not be the best client, but with a little work they can still become one. After all, maybe they just aren’t aware of what they should be doing.
The clients you will want to let go will be the ones who have a rating below 20.
When you take the time to rate all of your clients, you will be closer to reaching your goals of having all ideal clients in your firm. Looking for more helpful tips and content like this? You will find so many interesting topics within my free Facebook group, so come join in on the fun today!