Instead, those resources should be focused on nurturing your very best customers, the ones who love what you do, buy from you repeatedly and rave about you to other people.
Jack Ma, the founder and executive chairman of Alibaba Group, is famously quoted as saying, “When Selling to close friends and family, no matter how much you're selling to them, they will always feel you're earning their money, no matter how cheap you sell to them, they still wouldn't appreciate it.'
The message: There will always be customers who do not care about your costs, time or effort. They care only about the cost of your offering rather than appreciating the value of it.
Experience shows that 80% of most business’s sales and profits will come from the top 20% of its clients. Instead of focusing on their happy Top 20% of Clients, most business owners pay too much attention to the squeaky wheels, the not so great 80% of customers who will never be a Top Client.
For many business owners, particularly those starting out, it can feel counter-intuitive to limit your efforts to attracting and serving only those who are ideal clients. You naturally want to serve and nurture every customer you can get.
However, most business owners know that their lower value customers (80%) take up disproportionate time and resources, expecting the best offering at the cheapest price, and the relationship is mainly transactional with constant pricing pressure. These are the customers the business should stop catering to and look to replace with Ideal clients.
Here are 5 great reasons why focusing on your best customers is so important to your business success:
Not only will caring about your top customers make them happy, but you too will derive more value out of them. On average, loyal and happy customers are worth up to 10 times as much as their first purchase.
Your best customers are your best lead generators. They can market your offering better than any marketing campaign can do and at a fraction of the cost.
Serving and attracting more of your best customers increases the possibility of positive online feedback and reviews. This in turn adds credibility to your offering and provides social proof that you deliver on your promise.
Your marketing effectiveness soars as a result of building a stronger brand presence focused around the needs of your best customers. This gives you clear differentiation and helps you organically attract more of your most profitable customers.
Happy and satisfied customers also lead to a happy and productive work environment for employees, so focusing on servicing your best customers is not only your best customer retention strategy, it also helps with staff retention.
Understanding the needs of your best customers and serving them better than your competition is critical in growing a profitable and sustainable business.
At Trinity Advisory, we’ve combined our accounting and business advisory expertise with our business coaching skills to help you evaluate and refine your client base, dive deeper into what your Top Clients want and need from you, continually innovate around your Unique Offering, create and deliver new offerings that are in high demand by your Top / Ideal Clients, refine the systems and processes that will support your profitable growth and effectively market to your niche.
If you’re a small business owner who needs help developing strategies to identify and attract your ideal clients and scale your business for
profitable growth, then get in contact today!
