When you're hungry for business, every customer feels like a good customer. But some cost you far more than they pay — the ones who haggle endlessly, demand the impossible, pay late, drain your team's energy, and are never satisfied no matter what you do. They take up the time and goodwill you could have spent on the customers who actually value you.
Not all revenue is good revenue. A customer who pays well but treats your people poorly, or who consumes triple the support of a normal client for the same fee, is quietly costing you — in morale, in opportunity, in the work you didn't do because you were managing them. Learning to recognise these early, and occasionally to say "we're not the right fit," is a sign of a maturing business, not a failing one.
This feels counterintuitive when money's tight. But every wrong customer you take on is capacity you can't give to a right one. Saying no protects the business you're trying to build.
The best sale is sometimes the one you politely decline.
Knowing who your business is for — and who it isn't — is part of the Grow course.
Free first step: the free Business Stage Assessment.
Annie
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