BUSINESSES that treat their client roster as a comfort blanket – loading it with any old clients merely to bulk it out – are making a rod for their own backs. It is better to work at retaining two high-quality clients, who trust you to do what you do best, than chase clients who will end up hogging precious time and resources.

Problem clients can include:

– Clients who don’t trust your expertise, and seek to control your work at every step of the relationship. Typical behaviour might include the client phoning around different members of your team, asking the same question, instead of trusting the word of your account manager.

– Clients who chop and change the brief, creating extra work for you, but who will protest when you explain that they will have to increase the budget to accommodate the extra work.

– Clients who are bad payers (always run a credit check before signing any contract).

– Client prospects who invite you to pitch for business, but have no intention of giving you any work. (One way to safeguard against this is to check the seniority of the client contact inviting you to pitch; if they are junior, they may be seeking to impress someone further up the food chain, and have not got sign-off for the project.)

“Your success as a business owner or executive will be largely determined by how many high quality clients you can attract and retain,” advises Bill Tamminga, a Denver-based marketing and web design expert who specializes in helping service businesses in the Denver area establish and grow their client bases.

He adds: “It is getting more and more difficult to do this because clients have so many service providers to choose from, and there is less money to go around in a down market.”

Tamminga suggests the following sales and marketing techniques as a way to nurture the high-quality client relationships that you already enjoy, rather than spending your time chasing low-end clients:

Invite outside experts to address your clients
Clients love to know they're working with experts. When you bring in an expert from the outside, your clients apply the expert's knowledge to you. That person is seen as part of your team. It can be a great way for clients to get a deeper understanding to how and why you do what you do and how it benefits their lives. If you do not have a large enough client base to draw a crowd, consider partnering with another service provider and performing a joint seminar.

Send meeting summaries to clients
Some of the best business owners continue to use this strategy to keep their clients informed of major business decisions. They will send out a brief summary of key decisions they have made each month based on market demands.

Send hand-written holiday and birthday notes
Hand-written notes seem to mean more today than they used to. Maybe it's because we fire off so many emails and we get so much junk in the mailbox. Regardless, it is nice to get a thoughtful, hand-written note of appreciation every now and then. Birthdays and holidays are as good a time as any to do this.

Attach a hand-written note to an article of interest to a client
Few things will help establish you as an expert more than sending an article of interest to your clients with a note attached – especially if you are quoted in the article!

Tamminga says: “These are four easy ways to solidify your relationship with your current list of clients. The more action items you commit to incorporating in your marketing plan, the easier it will be to retain clients.”

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