Several years ago, I started thinking about by professional relationships with authors and agents. I noticed that some relationships were highly profitable and enjoyable. Others were highly profitable but a constant drain on our staff and resources. Others were enjoyable, but had not yet reached their full potential. Still others were unprofitable and unenjoyable. This got me to thinking.

I imagined a two-by-two matrix, similar to the Boston Consulting Matrix, with the horizontal axis representing maintenance and the vertical axis representing profitability. (To download a PDF of the full diagram, click here.) I think this matrix describes just about every kind of professional relationship you can have.

Every relationship is somewhere on the continuum of profitability. It may be highly profitable, marginally profitable, or completely unprofitable. Every professional relationship also requires a certain amount of maintenance to service it. As a result, the relationship may be high-maintenance, low-maintenance, or something in between.

As a result, there are four possible combinations:

1. Priority 1. These are the high-profit/low-maintenance relationships. They don’t require a lot of energy to service, and they yield big profits. These kinds of relationships are delightful. Everyone is happy. The secret to success in business is to develop more of these kinds of relationships. They are the cash cows.
2. Priority 2. These are the low-profit/low-maintenance relationships. The reason these kinds of relationship are second in priority is because they have at least half of the equation right: they are low maintenance. Your hope is that with a little work, you can also make them highly profitable. They are the bright and shining stars. In terms of how you allocate resources, these should be your second priority.
3. Priority 3. These are the high-profit/high maintenance relationships. These are probably the most frustrating. They seem too profitable to exit. But they require so much maintenance, you are often left wondering whether it is worth the effort. As a result, they are a perpetual question mark. They key is to try and force these relationships into the Priority 1 quadrant. If you can’t do this, then you need to bite the bullet and exit the relationship. The time spent servicing these kinds of relationships is time you can’t invest in finding more Priority 1 relationships or helping Priority 2 relationships become Priority 1 relationships.
4. Priority 4. These are the low-profit/high maintenance relationships. They are “dogs,” at least in terms of the value to your organization. They are a huge waste of resources. They wear out your staff. They have little or no no potential, so the sooner you come to grips with reality, the better. Getting rid of these kinds of relationships will allow you to reclaim resources you can invest in finding or serving Priority 1 relationships. Once you exit the relationship, you’ll only wonder why you didn’t do it sooner.

Now if this matrix is valid—and obviously I think it is—then it’s worth taking some time to describe in detail what the ideal relationship looks like. In the next few posts, I will do just that. I want to provide you with the Profile of the Ideal Publisher, Author, and Agent. If you are in publishing, this will give you a head start. If you are in some other kind of business, you can apply the same principles to any relationship—clients, vendors, customers, etc.

Related posts:

• Strategic Relationship Management, Part 3
• Strategic Relationship Management, Part 4
• Strategic Relationship Management, Part 2
• Priority Management and Life Balance
• Project Management and Herding Cats