Are you a Cost of Doing Business or a Long Term Investment

I just have one question for every entrepreneur or freelancer who deals with corporate or repeat clients, does your client see you as cost of doing business, just another line on their expense reports, or as a long-term investment? Based on your answer to this question for every client you are currently working with and any client who approaches you in the future, who should you be focusing on?

This is a question I wished I asked myself about three years back when I was running a public relations company for local small business owners and web entrepreneurs. Answering this question for everyone of my clients would have really helped me prioritize and focus on the right aspects of my business.

There were so many clients who simply viewed my services as just a cost, a service they would purchase once or twice, simply to get the word out quickly about their product. I would write and deliver the press release, and then move on. However, there were also those clients who were in it for the long-haul. Those clients who wanted to form a long-term relationship, and thus more lucrative partnership, to not only get the word out once, but also develop three month or six month or even one year plans for ongoing public relations work.

These were the clients I should have been solely working with as it would be the clients who invested in me that would bring in the greatest amount of revenue and referral business, growing sales and building my brand in the industry. Time wasted on trying to adjust the view of the companies who saw my services as merely another cost so that they would see me as an investment would have been better spent working on making sure that the companies who had already invested in me achieved an even better ROI.