Scottish Bluebell Matches, Communication and My Dad
March 11, 2010Clever marketing Ideas No. 3
March 13, 2010A few days ago I wrote a post ‘Increase Your Profits by “Pruning” Your Business‘ where I talked about ways that you can ‘prune’ your business and increase its profitability. I also talked a little about Simon, a former client, and his manufacturing company and how he had applied this to his business.
Targeting “A-grade” Customers
“Pruning” his business was the first step in Simon’s plan, the second was to define what they considered were the characteristics of an ‘A-grade’ customer. He then had all of his people focus their efforts toward improving the quality of their service to their best, or “A-grade” customers.
Following his earlier pruning, this proved easy to do because they were no longer spending a lot of time calling on, and/or servicing unprofitable accounts.
This meant his team could easily keep their best customers very happy…turning them into raving fans, who referred lots of other businesses to Simon’s company…and, funnily enough, they were just like the “A-grade” clients who had referred them. By focusing on a select group of clients and developing those relationships, they were also able to find additional products and services they, or their partners, could provide to those “A” clients.
One of the biggest benefits of this whole process was that the attitude and morale of his organisation changed. His sales people were making more money, and everybody was having more fun because they were spending their time, energy, and effort serving their “A” customers.
…and with their new-found, free time, they’re now able to look for new opportunities and clients with the same profile as their best customers.
Simon is now setting his sights on growing his business to £8 million, and then £10 million in sales, by doing business with only the “best” clients… and reckons he’s going to have much higher profit margins.
Growing Your Business
Here are three things you can do to grow your topline and bottom line:
- 1. prune your customer base and stop servicing those customers who take up lots of your time, but don’t do much business with you.
- 2. give your best customers great levels of attention and service. In the words of Seth Godin: ‘Make big promises; overdeliver.’
- 3. Create a profile of your ideal or “best” client, then find more clients who match it.
Guaranteed, you’ll have more fun, and make lots more money…
Thanks to fotddarren for the photo