Summary: There is a big difference between active clients, non-clients and former clients. And those who fail to make the distinction will waste a lot of time and money.<br> <br> It was great seeing so many familiar faces last week at the ASI Show in Orlando. What a nice way to start off the new year. The weather was colder than expected, but the training and the attendance were hot, hot, hot!<br> <br> I ran into a lot of people I’ve known for a long time and it got me thinking about the tremendous difference between clients, non-clients and former clients. And it’s a lesson I think we should all take to heart.<br> <br> <br> <br> I’m back in the office this week for a quick break in the action before heading out to Las Vegas next week for the training sessions I’m conducting at the PPAI Expo, then off to Dallas the following week for my presentations at the next ASI Show.<br> <br> While the travel schedule can be hectic, I love being at these events, making the presentations and interacting with our clients and members.<br> Each year, I see a lot of people I know including clients, former clients and non-clients.<br> If you’ve been in sales or business for any length of time, you see and know people like this as well.<br> <br> Starting with:<br> <br> Your active clients: These are the people who benefit from the services you offer on an ongoing basis. They order from you regularly and form the foundation of your customer base. They can count on you, and you can count on them. These are the people we’re constantly looking for in business: Loyal clients who get what we do and who appreciate the value we bring to the table. Make no mistake, these are the people we’re in business for.<br> <br> Second: Non-clients. Those who, for whatever reason, have never purchased from us and most likely never will. Many non-clients are happy to pick our brains and take advantage of whatever tips, advice, ideas, services or benefits we’re willing to offer them for free. But they will not spend any money with us, at all — ever. For that reason, one of the most critical and important prospecting skills we can develop is the ability to quickly identify non-clients, so we can prevent them from distracting our focus, tapping our resources and wasting our time.<br> <br> Third: Former clients. People who at one point or another found enough value in our work to pay us for that value, but for whatever reasons, no longer do. If you’re like me, you appreciate former clients. You’re happy that you were able to be a part of their world and they were able to be a part of yours.<br> <br> I’m really fortunate, because many of my former clients still get tremendous value from purchases they made from me years ago. One former client who I helped though a difficult time told me last week that he was able to get his mortgage paid off in 2017, he’s on track to do nearly a million in sales and he still uses our Getting Started program to train all his new reps. One of our AIM SmartEQP members was telling me last week how he’s been using our Customer Acquisition program to bring in new clients for years. He told me he’s launched more than 20 customer acquisition campaigns and it works for him every time -- meaning that the most successful campaigns get him a lot of customers and the least successful campaigns still get him customers, but also show him exactly where things are going wrong, so he knows what to fix.<br> <br> But it’s not always strictly business. At a trade show in Chicago, I ran into a former client in an elevator who thanked me for something I said in one of the original Top Secrets training programs. I was talking about how as a business owner one of the biggest benefits we have is the ability to determine how we spend our time. I talked about the fact that I had adjusted my schedule to drive my kids to school from the time they were in kindergarten,
