Because of our podcast and because we’re guests on other podcasts, Carol Lynn and I talk to a lot of marketing shop owners. They all want to make more money. That’s not surprising. Who doesn’t? What is surprising is that the overwhelming majority of them aren’t making sustainable money to begin with. That’s with work hours encroaching on evenings, weekends and holidays.

These businesses often make the assumption that the path to more money is more clients. I’ve found the opposite. The path to more revenue is closing fewer clients, but the right kind. The ones who provide a desirable balance between labor and revenue.

If we narrow this discussion to clients who run small businesses, making a decent living is becoming harder and harder. Small businesses rarely value branding. They value immediate ROI and paying as little as possible. They also value do-it-yourself solutions that put them in control for very little money.

This isn’t bad, but it does preclude many good marketers from making a reasonable living working for small businesses. What compounds the problem is that the amount of effort, research and skill that goes into developing good marketing for a small business isn’t any different than what goes into a medium sized business. I know dozens of marketers who provide high quality services for a fraction of their fee just to be able to close the business. That type of effort almost always goes unrewarded and clients often feel that they should be getting more anyway.

A friend recently cut his rates by half for a customer and then received this note: “Your fees are high, but I guess I have to do this.”

Seek to build relationships with people who value what you do, not the price tag you put on your service.

These are my 300 words for the day. I am Ralph M. Rivera.

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