When it comes to clients, go big, entrepreneurs

Q: Hi, Steve —  As we head into the new year, my goal is to grow our business and make more money. But, so far in my experience, that has proven to be easier said than done. Might you have any suggestions of some smart, effective ways to grow, and grow rich(er)? I need something that works and is not hard to implement. Thanks —  Victoria

A: Once upon a time in a LaLa land far, far away, there was a frustrated real estate broker. He was a kind, good and hardworking broker, yes, but he was also a very broke broker. The problem was, he was working in a downward trending Southern California real estate market at that time and additionally, there was a ton of competition for home listings and sales. As a result, our friend had a tough time eking out a living.

Discouraged and perplexed and knowing he should be more successful, the sad broker one day went to see a wise old real estate agent and asked what to do. The elder man was known to be quite well off and yet never seemed to work too hard.

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“What is your secret, sire?” the broker asked.

“My secret?” the older man asked rhetorically, before answering, “bigger clients.”

“You see,” he said, “the mistake you are making is that you are working far too hard for too little money. Home sales are slow right now, it takes a lot of work in this market to even make a sale, and then, when you do, there isn’t a lot of money to be made.

“The better bet is to find bigger, richer, better-paying clients who do bigger deals for more money. That way, you will get paid much more, but the amount of work you will be doing will be the same, or even less. Professional client pay very well indeed.”

The younger broker took his mentor’s advice to heart and, lo and behold, within a year started to make far more money selling apartment houses for corporate clients than he ever did selling single family homes.

This strategy worked for yours truly as well. As you know, I am a writer; I create small business content — articles, blogs, webinars, videos and so on. There was a time when I focused my energies and marketing on selling to non-profit associations.

The problem with non-profits is that, well, they don’t have much profit to spend, do they?

And then I remembered the story of the real estate broker. Eureka! I pivoted, changed direction and began to focus my energies on selling to corporate clients instead. It made all the difference. I quadrupled my income in a little over a year by employing this strategy.

Where do you find these bigger clients? And how do you sell to them? Well, that is a story for another day, but suffice it to say that you start by making a list of corporations and other big clients that are in your industry. Do some research, find the right people or divisions within that company and pitch away.

Of course, there is a lot more to it than that, but that is the essential idea.

I have shared this strategy and story a lot over the years, and there seems to be quite a bit of pent-up demand to know more.  To help, I have decided to offer a free webinar. I have teamed with SCORE, and on Jan. 11, I will be presenting a seminar titled, “How to Get High Paying Clients.” In it, I will not only share a half-dozen unique and different ways to find these high-paying clients, not only how to sell to them, but I will also explain what they are looking for in partners and why this economy is the best time to jump on this powerful strategy.

Today’s tip: I recently took an expensive course on how to build a robust opt-in email list. The teacher is a master at this sort of stuff. At one point, he discussed the need to get a great website and domain name. “If possible,” he said, “get a .com or a .net. Those are definitely your best bets.”

Well, the good news today is that Verisign, the folks in charge of .com and .net, just made finding that great domain name much easier. Verisign recently launched Name Studio. The service is an intelligent, intuitive, domain name creation tool that provides relevant suggestions based on popular keywords, trending news topics, social, personal names and semantic relevance. It’s great.

You can learn more about Name Studio here. Steve says check it out.

Steve Strauss, @Steve Strauss on Twitter, is a lawyer specializing in small business and entrepreneurship and has been writing for USATODAY.com for 20 years. Email: sstrauss@mrallbiz.com. You can learn more about Steve at MrAllBiz.