Step One to Working Fewer Hours: Eliminate Extraneous Customers
Learning how to chop 10 hours off of a typical workweek without sacrificing any income takes time, but it is not as difficult as most people think. The first rule of any time management system is to make the most out of the time you are allotted. This means that your initial task is to eliminate unnecessary and/or redundant labor. We need to preserve the time we have, because it is the one resource you can never get back.
Time is money, and as the saying goes, “The thief to be most wary of is the one who steals your time.”
This brings us to the rather controversial first step: eliminating customers who are a waste of time and energy. Think of them as being shoplifters who specialise in stealing our valuable time. We need to either get rid of them or transform them into paying customers who proactively feed the bottom line.
While this approach will sound shocking to many entrepreneurs, it is a practical and essential step in the growth process. Some clients simply aren’t worth your time. They don’t pay their invoices on time, they never stop complaining about trivial details, and they tie up all of the employees and managers in your business. Dealing with them costs precious hours and money while offering nothing in return. It is a smart business policy to “fire” them and instead focus on customers who deserve your attention: people who respond with loyalty and profitable transactions.
Sometimes “getting rid of customers” involves deleting dead-end leads from the client database. Other times, it may mean sending selected clients down the road to a more appropriate business that matches their price demands. But in many cases, it means that the business has to re-examine its own internal products and services. Rather than directly eliminating customers, an entrepreneur may need to instead eliminate the magnets that are attracting those unwanted customers.
For example, companies frequently offer too many discounts, freebies, or products that are not related to the core business model. Instead, concentrate on the services and products that produce profits, and jettison the dead weight of product and services that don’t contribute their share to the bottom line. Spin those lines off as stand-alone businesses and sell them to another entrepreneur, or upgrade to premium versions that offer higher profit margins.
Profit is both the ultimate end goal and the most important barometer of success. Strong, lean companies are not financially anaemic; they are streamlined for making more money with less time and effort in any economic climate.
This blog post is part of our ActionCOACH guide ‘Working Fewer Hours’ that can be downloaded here
