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Are You Working with the Right Clients?

Geri owns a small successful medical billing company. Recently, a large hospital in the area began speaking with Geri about outsourcing a block of patient accounts. To be fair, the hospital published a request for bids for the work. But the hospital wanted Geri to win the contract so much that they gave her subtle hints about her competitor’s bids.

While preparing her bid, Geri discovered that during the last 15 years, the hospital cancelled every outsourcing agreement they ever had for billing. These agreements were cancelled whether the hospital was happy with the work or not. Every time there was a management change, the new people wanted to do things their own way.

Geri decided that despite how much money and prestige she would gain from working with the hospital, she would not work with a client who did not value loyalty.

What can we learn from Geri’s example?

Choose Your Clients Wisely

Keeping your best clients is much more difficult when you do not choose the right clients to begin with. Notice I did not say choose “good” clients. A good client is not necessarily the right client for your business.

Just as running a business is easier when you have the right employees, doing business is more fulfilling when you are working for the right clients. How can you determine if a potential client is the right one?

Build an effective client screening process by asking the right questions. When you have gathered all of the information available, you want the answer to two key questions: can you help this client, and can you work with this client.

Can You Help This Client?

What is the difference between the right client and a good client? The right client needs what you are best at providing. The right client is the one you can be most helpful to. You may have good chemistry with a potential client, but that does not mean you are right for the job. If you do work you are not well suited for, the bond could suffer. If you make sacrifices to do the work well, you might draw resources away from what you do best.

What Geri does best is keep her patients current on their payments. Geri is excellent at providing the human touch to medical billing. Her patients genuinely want to keep current. They care about Geri, because they experience her care for them.

What if Geri was asked to perform high-pressure debt collection for a client she liked? She would be wise to turn him or her down. The high-pressure, confronting debt collection service counters what she is best at.

You are most helpful when you do what you do best.

Can You Work With This Client?

To determine if you can work with a potential client, find out if he or she shares your values.

A common set of values is very important for negotiating the challenges that naturally occur in client-vendor relationships. Even a well-negotiated agreement will require changes. Life is unpredictable.

For instance, Geri might have a client that begins to offer a medical procedure that has a different payment plan. What if Geri’s contract has an incentive clause that rewards her for quickly zeroing out patient accounts?

Renegotiating the agreement is appropriate. Geri’s client may be responding to changing market conditions. These changes can alter the assumptions behind the original agreement.

Renegotiating or dealing with challenges in client-vendor relationships is much easier when both of you share a common set of core values.

Finding the Right Client

Can you recall, as a child, the first time you walked out into the playground at a new school? You did not know a soul. But, somehow you were able to find someone and form the early bonds of friendship.

We are all equipped with a form of social radar that helps us find the right people to be friends with and to work with. Sometimes, the natural ebb and flow of our lives can impair the accuracy of that radar. Developing an effective client screening process can help you avoid the wrong clients.

When you can pick the right clients for your business, the battle to keep them is that much closer to being won.

Happy Client Retaining,

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© 2004-2007 Jeff Simon Consulting. All Rights Reserved. Wouldn't you love to peer into your client's head and know what they are thinking and feeling? Could you have better success at keeping and choosing your best clients if you could decode their behavior? Check out the Happy Clients Newsletter at: www.happyclientsnewsletter.com.

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