One of my Roundtable members is a wonderful gentleman named Ben. He came to a 4-Man Intensive  last spring.

Ben is a typical Planet Perry guy: *Extremely* competent at what he does, and on top of that bends over backwards to help a customer. He’s very empathetic, so he’s eternally susceptible to “Well, I can’t really engage with you as a full client but if you could just help me with this little problem here…”

And he gets on a $0 or $2,000 distraction that keeps him from picking up a $50,000 check.

So he came to my home office with his sales manager Jane. I was delighted to see Jane wore stilettos and drove a Harley. I don’t know how he ‘knew’ to hire a tough cookie like her, but she was the right gal.

I issued Ben and Jane an edict:

“Ben, you are not to even TALK to any customer or prospective customer until Jane has verified their ability to give you five thousand bucks at the absolute bare minimum.” I continued:

“NO pro bono cases.”

“You are going to raise your fees 30% to 50% starting right now.”

“NO hey if you could just help me with this little side project here people.”

“No more minnows. You’ve got 20 pound bass swimming around all over the place.”

He has a weakness that almost every person who is WORTHY of getting somebody’s money has:

He loves what he does so much, and he loves helping people so much, he forgets to get PAID.

I gave Jane permission to yank him by the scruff of the neck, any time he got too involved in solving somebody’s techie problem and wasn’t getting paid for it.

When I posted my now world-famous “Perry’s Greed” blog, where people scorched me for charging $725 per hour for lunch [which now costs $2,500], the #1 comment I got from actual paying customers was:

“When I stopped helping people for free, I started to actually make money!”

You may not LIKE the fact that money makes the world go round.

But neither your landlord nor your grocer nor your auto mechanic nor Exxon Mobile gives a crap about how you feel about that. They want their dinero.

It’s time for you to get yours.

Ask for the dinero. And maybe you, like Ben, will be coming to Roundtable bragging about your 4X growth over last year – and flying in to the meetings from your second home in Aspen Colorado.

Perry Marshall

About the Author

Perry Marshall has launched two revolutions in sales and marketing. In Pay-Per-Click advertising, he pioneered best practices and wrote the world's best selling book on Google advertising. And he's driven the 80/20 Principle deeper than any other author, creating a new movement in business.

He is referenced across the Internet and by Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, INC and Forbes Magazine.