Welcome to the Executive Sales Leader Briefing, a new blog series I am doing every Friday.
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A business without customers is not a business for very long, but the same could be said about a business doing business with bad customers.
Don’t think you don’t have any bad customers. There are far more bad customers out there than anyone wants to admit.
Bad customers take on any number of personalities. Some are small, infrequent buyers, while others are huge, taking a large amount of resources each day.
You can fire a bad customer!
In the end, it comes down to two things:
1. Does this customer enable us to make a fair profit?
2. Can we do it in a way that does not compromise the company’s values?
If a customer can’t deliver on both, then why have them?
When we spend resources against an unprofitable customer, we’re creating two problems. One is we’re not making money, and two, we’re taking resources away from customers with whom we are making money and could potentially be making more money.
The unprofitable customer is not one you can afford to hold onto.
The easiest way to deal with an unprofitable customer is to raise their prices. If a customer is going to place demands on your company and use resources, then they need to be paying for them.
High-maintenance customers are fine, as long as the revenue you’re receiving reflects that. If you can’t get it, then the customer needs to go to your competitor. Let you competitor have the thrill of a high-maintenance, zero-profit customer.
Copyright 2016, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog. Mark Hunter is the author of High-Profit Selling: Win the Sale Without Compromising on Price.
