Eighty percent of your results come from twenty percent of your clients – so at least fire the bottom twenty percent of your clients (they’re sucking up eighty percent of your time).
Feels odd to be thinking about getting rid of some of your revenues at any time, let alone during an economic downturn, but these clients likely generate very little revenue,and perhaps even cost you money. So get rid of them.
Your bottom 20% also take up more of your time and energy too.
When cutting these bottom twenty percent clients, you can also eliminate some of the waste or overhead you have in supporting them. You’ll free up time in all areas of your business especially shipping, customer service and accounting. You’ll save time in your sales meetings by not talking about these clients.
Fire the bottom twenty percent:clients who take up time, suck up energy or don’t pay their bills. You’ll free up more time for your profitable clients and get more business from new, better ones.
Who would you rather spend time with? Your Top 5% or your Bottom 20%? Where are you spending it now?
When writing this post I was sitting in a quiet room with a fireplace up at a Whistler, BC lodge. No people, music, phones or email. Just me sitting beside a window watching the snow fall = perfect environment for me to focus and get some real quality work done.
Find an environment to focus and productivity improves. So will the quality of your work.
Strict Focus Days are helpful. Slowing down every month or quarter long enough to sit quietly and obsess about the future helps fuel more thoughtful decisions about the present and future of your business.
During these times, it’s good to think about the following:
Where in your business could you be focusing more?
Who could you be building better relationships with?
Who are your biggest clients? How could you get more business from them?
Are you taking time to really focus without the trappings of day to day life distracting you (laptop, email, phone)? If not, I strongly urge you to think about taking a Focus Day (or a few) to disconnect from the rest of the world and be alone with yourself and your thoughts.
I’ve looked at my companies metrics or KPIs every week. Back in my College Pro Painters days, we called it the “Weekly RAG” (Results At A Glance) and it was critical to the goal-setting and planning we did weekly to drive the business. If you’re not looking at a dashboard for your business weekly already, how’s that working for you?
To assist me in keeping teams and individuals focused, I’ve had one-on-one meetings each week with all my direct-reports. And I’ve ensured that they had these same one-on-one meetings with those who reported to them. At College Pro Painters, we called it GS&R: Goal Setting and Review. This simple meeting rhythm provided a ton of focus for all of us.
Fortune magazine asked me once, “How do you motivate your employees?” I said, “I don’t.” I continued, “I refuse to try to motivate people. What I want to do is try to take people who are already motivated and inspire them to do the stuff they know they have to do, and give them the systems and tools to create change. Then be there to support them.”
Help align and keep people focused who are already motivated. That’s a recipe for growth.
It’s not as much about setting the goals as it is about getting the damn stuff done.
Too many people write lists. Lists are great. I use them too. However getting stuff done isn’t just about lists and setting goals. That’s only the starting point.
REALLY getting stuff done is about deciding exactly when you’re going to do it and putting that task right into your calendar at a specific time based point.
a) What are you going to do
b) When are you going to do it
Try that for a week… Prove me wrong. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Are you struggling to stay on task? Do you often feel like you are jumping from here to there and back to here, only to forget where ‘here‘ was?
Good news: You’re not alone.
Bad news: If you don’t fix it, you will be alone (with a struggling business).
Tom Peters, the author of In Search of Excellence,used to say you need to be a “monomaniac with a mission.”
True leadership is saying “no” more than you say “yes”. Saying “no” will allow you to focus on one project rather than taking more on.
Multi-tasking may make you feel busy, but it doesn’t drive results. It’s impossible to get real results while doing two things at once. One of the core things the CEOs I’m mentoring benefit from is me helping them say no to the big shiny objects they are attracted to starting as entrepreneurs.
It’s really cool how they work: You post the projects or work you need done and people around the world bid on the project, offering their price to get the work done for you. They even provide references and samples for past work they’ve done. Over the last year alone, I’ve had research done by someone living in Karachi, Pakistan, for $2 an hour. I needed to get some contact info, addresses, and information related to venture capital firms and angel investors in Washington state and British Columbia. It would’ve taken me all week to do it and an employee would have cost too much when this person was thrilled to do it for $120 in total. And the output rocked.
I needed to have all of my DVDs from speaking events transcribed so I used the transcription services of someone in Sweden for $8 an hour. I also had some media interviews that produced content I thought could be useful, so I simply emailed her the files and she typed them all up in Word for me. Many transcription firms used to charge $75-125 an hour for this. Her 20 hours of work was a little more than $125 in total.
I’ve used virtual assistants around the world to work on miscellaneous tasks for me. Even CEOs that I mentor are already starting to outsource work they used to delegate to employees. It just doesn’t make sense to delegate work to people for three to ten times what it costs us when you can outsource using services like this. As long as you’re getting the right quality out of these services, it’s worthwhile.
When I actually delivered on that promise, they were dumbfounded.
If CEOs weren’t present at the start of class, or hadn’t returned to the class after a break, we shut the door and started without them.
A gesture this simple respects people’s time and helps you stay on course.
Try to also ’compress time’ when you are booking meetings. When you are thinking of booking a meeting if what ever time amount you first think you’ll need to have the meeting in – reduce it by fifty percent and book it for that shorter period of time. So instead of booking it for one hour, book it and finish it in thirty minutes.
Like so many other obligations, meetings tend to fill the space you give them. By compressing the time of meetings, you increase everyone’s productivity, and implement a highly profitable system of time management.
Eighty percent of your results come from twenty percent of your clients – so at least fire the bottom twenty percent of your clients (they’re sucking up eighty percent of your time). 
I’d love to hear your thoughts.
