Stacking the Deck

Who is your best client? Not your biggest client, your best one.

As regular readers know, it is extremely rare for a company’s largest customer to be one of the best customers as well. Often, as we’ve discussed, the largest customer receives enough special deals and discounts that the relationship is fundamentally unprofitable on a fully-burdened basis.

Instead, we’re talking about the best customers, the A-List clients who drive more than 100% of your company’s value. (And if they produce more than 100%, then somebody else is actually sapping your strength.)

We discussed the attributes of A-List Clients a few months ago (http://quadrantfivefocus.com/2014/02/11/bad-advice/) so we won’t be rehashing all of the finer points here. However, it might be a good idea to incorporate these traits into sales goals, and commission structure, for the coming year.

Equally important, it’s a great idea to focus on the most target-rich environments for the types of clients you want to win and keep. When you examine the best clients in your universe…

• What makes them clients you’d want to keep?
• Are they defined by industry, size, life cycle, ownership, geography or some other factors?
• How did you identify these clients as prospects?
• How did you market to them?
• Were there specific members of your team who were—or weren’t—involved in the sales process?
• Did you integrate these accounts in a different way than was the case with less valuable clients?
• Are there any specific aspects of your agreements, the size of the accounts or the product/service mix that create an A-List identity?
• Did they start out as great customers, or did your team do something that transformed the relationship? (Don’t ask your team, though, as they won’t know. Only the customer knows, so that’s where you’ll find the truth.)
• Have you done anything to encourage your people to focus on these clients, or do you encourage them to think that every dollar of revenue is the same? (Be careful on this one. Many executives—not you, of course—think they emphasize profitability, but the message doesn’t quite trickle down through the ranks.)
• Have you provided a list of attributes to help your sales team identify and focus on the people you want to convert, or is there merely a vague sense somewhere that they just know what to look for?

Focused targeting of clients that belong on your A-List is a powerful path to profitable, sustainable growth. Whatever your conversion rate is from lead to sale, one fact is indisputable: If you pursue A-List clients exclusively, every account you win this year will be an A-Lister.