As a provider of professional services, you spend time trying to generate referrals from customers and strategic partners. You may even have a referral plan. But do you have a plan in place for turning away business?
Sounds crazy, I know, But we are all guilty of taking on customers who probably weren’t a good fit for our business. Business we probably should have turned away. More often than not, we do a disservice to both ourselves and the customer when we take on this kind of work. In order to build the kind of practice you want AND help those prospects get their problems solved we need to be able to 1) identify who does not meet our ideal customer profile and 2) have a plan to refer them to someone that is better suited to helping them.
You probably have an idea of what your ideal client looks like. You have shared it with your referral partners and at your networking meetings. But how often have you used it to screen out prospects once they contact you? This is a difficult to do as the idea of turning away business goes against our instincts. However, if we want to be known as the “go to” resource in a particular area, we need to take care of our customer list.
One way to resist the temptation of taking on customers you shouldn’t is to have a plan in place to refer your non-ideal prospects to other providers who can serve them. If you do a good job of selecting and staying in touch with your referral partners, this should turn into a “win-win” for everyone involved. You will have helped the prospect solve their problem and you will have taken another step to demonstrating that you are a trusted advisor.
So what do you think? Will you create a plan for turning away business?
