About a decade or so ago I got a bit obsessed with poker.

For an ex-mathematician like me who then went on to study business and psychology, it's an alluring game. Full of analogies and parallels with business and marketing.

Although I haven't played for years, I still have a huge library of poker literature in storage. Brunson, Sklansky, Malmuth, Caro, Schoonmaker, dozens of them.

And I'm still sometimes reminded of the similarities between poker and business. Here's one that struck me recently.

Stacking the Odds in Your Favour

Perhaps the biggest difference between poker professionals and casual players – the thing that most results in one group winning money and the other losing it – is simply that the pros play less hands.

In the most popular form of poker, hold-em, there's a saying that “any two cards can win”. And while that may be true in exceptions, following that advice and regularly playing any two cards is a surefire route to the poor-house.

Instead, the pros stack the odds in their favour by only playing the best starting hands. They sit out round after round and only invest their precious chips in starting hands they know have a positive expected value (ie. if played often enough, they'll make money).

It's not a particularly clever strategy. It's not a particularly exciting one. But it works. It's the foundation they then build on.

Now,  if you were to watch poker on TV it wouldn't seem that way. Every pro mixes up their game and plays cards you wouldn't expect so that they don't become predictable. And inevitably the TV shows focus on those unusual hands, or hands where a big bluff comes off or someone gets lucky on the river.

But underneath all the fireworks, and the table talk, the pros know the odds and they play them.

Similarly, in marketing, one thing that separates successful rainmakers from those who struggle is they stack the odds in their favour by focusing on prospects with a high chance of becoming clients.

It sounds obvious. But so few people do it.

They don't have a clear picture in their mind of exactly the sort of person likely to need their services.

They go to networking events filled with people unlikely to ever become a client or to refer one.

They advertise in general media or Yellow Pages.

Their website offers nothing of value or interest to the people who would make the best clients for them.

When they ask for referrals, they say they'd be happy to get a referral to “anyone” or “small businesses”. Such broad definitions that they don't get referred to anyone (or worse still they get referred to people never likely to buy from them and so waste their time).

If you want to be successful and productive with your marketing you must invest your time and effort like professional poker players invest their chips: only in the very highest potential areas.

For most of us, our time is a super-scarce resource. Yet so often we use marketing approaches that cause us to spend valuable face-to-face time with people who aren't perfect prospects for us.

The result is not only wasted time for us – it's also a painful experience for both sides.

Don't be like the poker amateurs who play any two cards and throw away their chips night after night.