For any business, getting customers is a top concern. But are all customers created equal?

For a marketing agency or a freelancer, the best customers can become indispensable in growing your business. Your worst customers can suck up your time and energy, send your costs through the roof and jeopardize the success of their own projects while providing little in return in terms of referrals or testimonials.

Besides paying on time and other revenue-related advantages, your best customers do so much more for you.

First, they promote your business.

1. Sending you referrals.
No need to explain this. Referrals from existing customers is one of the least expensive and easiest ways to grow most businesses. Your best clients will recommend you to others, just because they are nice people, like your work and want to help you out.

2. Allowing you to use the work you did for them in your portfolio or as a case study.
Obviously, most prospective clients want to see examples of your previous work. When you sign on a client, you should think about how you can use the work you are doing for them in your portfolio or as a case study (a short story describing the work you've done for this client, or a problem you helped them solve). Adding a screenshot with their mobile site into your portfolio is good, but a little write up that includes their increase in traffic or conversions would show more value to your prospects.

In B2B marketing most small business customers should not have an issue with allowing you to publicize the work you did for them. When signing on a new customer, you can mention in the contract or a proposal that the work you do for them can be used for your marketing or promotional purposes. If a potential client has an issue with this clause, it probably means that they don't want others to know who did all this wonderful work for them (treat it as an early sign that they may not be that interested in helping you with referrals either).

3. Great customers would be generous about giving you a testimonial. (You would need to ask for one, of course).

Second, your best clients are motivated to work with you to get stuff done.

This sounds like a no-brainer (why would a client hire me and not be that motivated to get the project completed?). Yet, I can't stress enough how difficult it may be to complete projects with bad customers.

1. Unlike your worst client, your best client cares about the important stuff.
Obviously, nothing in this world is perfect. Any platform or service will have missing features or limitations. A good client is practical about valuing his own time and will focus on getting the important stuff done, and disregard the trivial. A bad client will lose track of the goal and wear you out with polishing the little details.

Example? A few years back, our digital agency was building a website for a client who flooded us with infinite requests to change colors, fonts and elements on their home page. Some of his comments were constructive, yet most were simply based on the ever-changing personal preferences, and were likely to make zero impact on his bottom line.
Tip: in your proposal you can mention how many rounds of revisions are included. (The reasonable number for a simple mobile site is "2"). If your prospect has an issue with that - beware.

2. While trusting you to do the work, your best client shows responsibility.
With more complicated projects, the odds are that unexpected things will come up, and you'll need your client's assistance (in helping map out the plan, providing you with the needed information or coordinating with their other vendors or freelancers). The best clients are good about helping you manage aspects they have more control over.
Assuming responsibility also means making decisions quickly and pushing things forward.

And finally, best clients treat you like a human being. They realize that you are not God, and that while you are doing your best, not everything is in your control.

The moral of the story is: don't forget to prioritize your best customers. Since they tend to be "low maintenance," it is too easy to get pulled away in reacting to the demands of bad customers and become too busy for your best customers. It may sound unintuitive, but finding time for lunch or a phone chat with a good customer to talk about how they can improve their business is more important than putting out another fire for a dead-end one.

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