My mornings start with personal growth time. Podcast on, before the workday gets loud.
This week it was Networking RX, an episode about a man named Bayad Jamshidi. He goes by B. B spent seven years studying why businesses end up with the wrong marketing agencies. He talked to 400 of them before he accepted the truth: the perfect do-everything agency doesn't exist. So he built a matchmaking company instead. He has evaluated more than 1,100 agencies, and before he matches a business with any of them, he asks the business four questions.
When the episode ended, I wasn't thinking about agencies. I was thinking about my own client list.
What B Knows That Most of Us Skip
B's whole business runs on one discipline: get specific information before anyone commits. He talks to at least 15 agencies before approving a single partner. Most businesses talk to one or two.
His four questions are simple. Where are you now? Where are you going? Why has this failed before? How do you think about this work?
Notice what those questions are not. They're not a sales script. They're a fit test. B isn't trying to close anyone. He's trying to find out if the match will hold.
You're on Both Sides of That Table
Here's the part that stopped me. Every business owner I know worries about getting hired. Almost none of them ask whether they should take the client.
Someone shows interest. They can pay. We say yes. Then three months later the project drags, the scope creeps, the emails get tense, and we wonder what happened.
What happened is the match was wrong from the start. And nobody asked the questions that would have shown it.
The Four Questions, Turned Around
Before your next yes, find out four things.
Where are they now? Their real situation, not the polished version. What resources do they have? What's broken?
Where do they want to go? Fast results or something built to last? If their timeline and your way of working don't match, no amount of effort fixes that.
Why didn't it work before? If they've burned through three providers in two years, the pattern matters. Sometimes the problem was the providers. Sometimes it wasn't.
How do they think about the work you do? Is it a cost to minimize or an investment to build on? Their answer predicts every conversation you'll ever have about money.
How to Know What Right-Fit Looks Like
The four questions test one client at a time. To know who you want walking in the door at all, use the PVP index from Allan Dib's book, the foundation of the 1-page marketing plan.
Score every type of client you serve from 1 to 10 in three areas.
P - Personal fulfillment. Do you enjoy working with them? Some clients give you energy. Some take it.
V - Value to the marketplace. How much do they value what you do? Some clients see your work as essential. Others see it as an expense to trim.
P - Profitability. Is the work profitable once you count all the hours? Be honest here.
Add up the scores. The highest number is your ideal target market. Now the four questions have a job: they tell you whether the person in front of you matches the client you scored a 27, or the one you scored a 12.
The Right Client Beats More Clients
A wrong-fit client costs more than an empty slot. They take the time that right-fit clients would have gotten, and they rarely send referrals, because the relationship never felt good to either of you.
Right-fit clients are the opposite. The work goes smoother, the results come easier, and they talk about you to people just like them. That's how a referral system starts - with who you let in the door. It also changes how you think about lead generation. Bringing in more clients without cold calling only helps if they're the right clients.
So borrow B's discipline. Ask specific questions before you say yes. Score your client types with the PVP index. And give yourself permission to refer the wrong ones somewhere else. It's better for them too.
This is why my own marketing support for small businesses starts with questions instead of a pitch. The free marketing health check is nine of them. Ten minutes, and we both find out where you are and whether I can help. That's the whole point.
Ellen Warren is the founder of Winged Gods Creation, a marketing consulting firm based in Western Pennsylvania. She has spent 30+ years helping small businesses build simple marketing systems that grow without the chaos.