Salt Lake City Bookkeeping Blog

Unless you are pretty green to the small business world at some point you have probably had to fire a customer of yours. So I pose you with the following question: is firing a client bad for your business? People that are new to business are probably thinking to themselves, "Why would you ever fire a client? That is refusing income. What a stupid decision."

As a small business owner do you think that your business sells or helps? The old sales saying goes "ABC...always be closing." But haven't we seen a shift in that with inbound marketing and sales? Now selling is all about helping. My brother Mark Roberge the Chief Revenue Officer of Hubspot has a great interview where he discusses Inbound Sales. He is totally right, it is all about helping your prospects now. Instead of selling prospects on your services you need to sell them on how your services can help them. You need to give real life examples of how you can help and you need to do it all for free. Think about it nobody wants to be sold to, they just want your help. So how can adopting this mentality actually convert new sales and help grow your business?

Do you ever wonder why we write blogs for our businesses? It can be a lot of work to keep up with and difficult to come up with new ideas. As I type this it is a beautiful Friday afternoon in Montana approaching 90 degrees; there are a million other things I would love to be doing. Yet, we write blogs, but why? 

Most of my time outside of the winter season is spent working on our small business and fly fishing. I live a very short walk from a good trout stream so I try and fish most days; at least for an hour or so. My daily routine consists of helping run a small business intermingled with some trout fishing, so I find a lot of correlations. It's hard not to occasionally let my thoughts drift back to business when I'm fishing (although I do try and escape). I was out fishing the other night thinking to myself, "I'm out here trying to sell to the trout. What am I doing wrong?" That is when I realized that success all comes down to presentation; both in sales and in fishing.

While most small businesses struggle to create enough sales some may have too many. Too many sales may seem like a good problem to have right? However, have you thought that maybe having more business than you can handle might be a bad thing? You may tell this to a small business owner that is struggling to grow and they would think you were crazy. Years ago I would have had the same reaction. Also, when I hear someone at a networking event tell me they are too busy, I am not impressed I am astounded. How could you ever turn down new business? Let’s take a look at why too much growth might be a bad thing for your small business.

My car finally died.  My 1999 Subaru with over 180,000 miles died after I had been driving it for over 11 years.  The car didn't owe me anything.  It had seen some abuse going up and down the canyon roads and more off the beaten dirt roads in Montana than I can remember.  So after my car died I had a choice; pay for an engine repair or go car shopping.  I hate car shopping.  I think it is the feeling that you are getting ripped off even if you think you are getting a good deal.  However, I got some lessons from the car salesman I dealt with.