I’m prompted to write about this topic for the simple reason that I sat beside a grandmotherly-aged woman on Friday on my plane trip to Florida. She carried on the plane with her the following: a cell phone, a PDA, an iPod, portable DVD player and a laptop. They were all hers! And in her carry on bag she had three Wii’s, the hot Christmas item.

I asked her why she did not pack the Wii’s in her luggage (which I knew she had since she told me). She said, “These are the hottest items in the world right now and I’ve got three of them; I don’t want them stolen.” So I asked the follow-up question: was she giving them to grandchildren? “Hell no,” she said, “I’m selling them on E-Bay.” She was convinced she was going to make a killing. I suppose the 46,000 other Wii sellers that where on E-Bay one week before Christmas thought the same thing.

So after the Wii discussion I commented on the other technology she was carrying around and wanted to know if it was all hers and I implied that I thought it might be a little too over the top. She looked at me like I was from another planet.

The plane ride got me thinking, so I clicked on Google when I sat down to address this week’s blog and typed in “too much technology.” I came across this great article; it is a couple of years old but in my mind still pertinent. I also got 12,100,000 other hits; however, for the sake of brevity I decided not to read them. Instead, I turned my laptop and cell phone off and went to play golf.

Okay this sounds crazy and it can be very scary. Common sense asks why one would ever do such a thing as fire customers? Well, simply put, it may make your business more profitable! I can hear you now, “Huh? What’s Al’s problem today?”

Just listen for just a minute. I’m not the only blogger in the universe who writes about this stuff, in fact it’s a pretty common theme.

We, as business owners in this crazy industry, don’t often want to look at the facts of doing business. The point is, some clients don’t deserve us and we don’t deserve some of them. The wise course is to sit down and really look at your client list, the AGI they generate, the thoughts of your Account Executives who handle the client from day to day and consider what I call the “Sleepless at Night Factor.”

Having a client that generates a lot of AGI but an equal amount of AE fatigue and the Sleepless at Night Factor should urge you to consider your options. Why do good AE’s leave? Well my experience over the last 30 plus years has shown me that while money is often a motivator, what generally pushes folks to make a change is they don’t like their clients. Now I admit, sometimes my answer to that is ’suck it up and get to work,’ but the reality is sometimes the AE is right.

Just take a look at your list and talk to your AE’s candidly. You might be surprised.

Oh, and Happy New Year. Here’s to hoping for lots of new business for all of us in 2008.