You should be reading Idealogy's "Marketing Minute."

If you are in the business of selling virtually anything, you also are engaging in marketing, and you should be on Allen Howie's mailing list. You may recall the Idealogy chief's Tribune column a few years back; lately, his weekly Marketing Minute has again become essential reading for me.

Here's my favorite passage from today's edition. Can we fire certain city residents, too?

Firing Customers

Everyone knows that some customers are more profitable than others. But what about those customers who might be profitable, but are simply awful people? Everyone dreads their calls and visits, their scowls and surliness, the unreasonable demands and perpetual dissatisfaction. Yes, they make you money, but at what cost to morale? And here's the difficult truth: they can't be satisfied, so no matter how you excel, they're still complaining about you (they complain about everyone). Firing a lousy customer can give morale a huge boost, and frees up resources to serve appreciative customers. And the one thing you won't have to worry about is the terminated customer telling anyone - the last thing they want to do is try to explain why they were asked to take their business elsewhere. Is there a customer you should fire today?