More is less in a small business

by Marsha Maung

In the decade of being in business as a freelance writer, do you want to know how many clients I've had? You do? Well, I don't know. Too many. Some worthwhile. Some worthless. Some conned me out of the little that I charge them. Some paid me too much for the little that I did. But too many. The point is that I grabbed everything that came my way.

 

And do you know that not all of them will remain with you for long? I assume you know that. But here's something that I learned about being in business….well, being in the Internet business, anyway.

 

Use the 80/20 rule. Which means that 80% of your clients will use your services or buy your products, love it, hate it, leave you. 20% (often less than that) will stay with you for a long time to come. Now, I learned this 80/20 rule when writing for a client about Human Resources. The article was deliberating between whether we should actually try to retain 100% of their resources? Should they do everything they can to satisfy all of their employees. It was discovered that it was pointless to satisfy 80% of their employees.

 

Now, in that article, I was writing about employees and later on (some years down), I read the same thing about retaining clients. By nature, as business owners, as writers, we want to satisfy everyone. We want to get everything. We want gross revenue. We want sales. The more web traffic, the better. The more clients, the better. The more qualified leads, the better.

 

But the brutal honest truth is that we don't need 80% of them! Don't bother. More does NOT mean more profit. It's the lust of a business owner that we have to fight. We have to resist the urge to say “OK, I'll do it for $1 each”. I am serious. As a freelance writer, I used to write long articles for $1 each. Well, the articles didn't make a lot of sense and the client paid but…..erm….is that what I want?

 

Lusting after business and sales will cause a burnout, actually. Which is what it landed me in. When you take on too much, you burn out, deliver poorly and the client receives half-hearted work.

 

If one is serious about business, I believe, one should always be serious about the job they're taking on. One should be sure that one can deliver 100%. Quality.

 

More is not better, therefore, is my opinion. So, remember, you don't need 80% of the sale you're getting. Instead, focus on the 20% that's worth your time and your profits will SSSOOOOOAAAARRRRRR!

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marsha Maung is a freelance blog content writer, freelance web content provider who has been in the business for eight years and counting. She resides in Selangor, Malaysia and is known as one of the first few Asian search engine copywriters who kicked butts! For more of her successful tactics of reaching top ranking in search engines, log onto http://www.marshamaung.com for samples and details.