Weekly Command: Ask Your Best Clients What They Like Least About Working With You
Years ago I sat across a walnut conference table in downtown San Francisco from a CEO who had every signal most consultants chase: fast growth, strong funding, recognizable logos on his client list, and a sales team already producing revenue. He wanted me to “whip these people into performing.” The longer I asked questions, the clearer it became that I was looking at a leadership problem instead a revenue problem, so I offered to bring in a change management expert to work alongside me. He ghosted me. I walked away from real money at a time when every contract mattered, and Chapter 2 of my book shares the dirty details.
Step 2 of this five-step process focuses on your Ideal Client for a reason. Last week you wrote down what you want in 2027, the revenue number behind it, and what is really in the way. This week you decide who you will earn that revenue from. Every time I’ve ignored my ideal client profile, I’ve paid for it anyway, in scope creep, exhaustion, and hours spent repairing systems the client didn’t actually hire me to fix.
With clients, I start with a list of their ten to twenty top clients, chosen by performance: revenue, ease of partnership, payment reliability, or how much they buy. Then I contact each one and ask two questions. What do you like most about working with this company, and assuming there is always room for improvement, what do you like least? I record every answer word for word. What clients like most becomes the language for sales and marketing, and what they like least tells you which objection to answer before a prospect ever raises it. Those answers become your Ideal Client Summary, the profile every new prospect gets measured against.
Weekly Command: Build your top-client list, ask at least five of those clients the two questions this week, and write down their answers exactly as they said them.
Set it up the way I would for a client:
1. Pick by performance. Choose clients by revenue, ease of partnership, payment, or how much they buy, rather than by who you like most or who has been with you longest. If you sell to consumers, choose your best customers by the same standards.
2. Keep their words. Call, text, or email, keep it brief, and write each answer down verbatim. If you catch yourself turning a compliment into your own marketing language, stop, because their exact phrasing is what you’ll use later.
3. Score your next prospect. Before you say yes to the next prospect, run them through the Ideal Client Summary Scorecard, which rates seven categories from 1 to 5. Cultural fit is the category most people skip, but it decides whether the other six matter, so don’t skip it. Use the same seven categories to decide what your website and marketing should screen for, so prospects who aren’t a fit filter themselves out before they ever reach you.
If you don’t have a client base yet, build your first ideal client profile from closest competitor reviews: what they rave about, what they complain about.
Score your prospects with the Ideal Client Summary Scorecard (https://claude.ai/artifact/2CrVXzXKqiv9vv5wD5pEQt). In the book coming out this year, it follows Chapter 2.
Cohort members, I’ll see you today at 11am Pacific. If you’re working solo, you’re on the same schedule, and next Monday we move to Step 3.
I’ll go first. My top-client list and the first answers I get back will be in the comments when it’s complete. Add yours in the comments as well. You’re not alone in this community. We’re all working toward increasing revenue.