When is it time to fire a customer?

 #MaximizeYourMonday

Customers come in all shapes and sizes and because they do, each of them requires their own unique way of dealing with them. Today we’re going to start with identifying good customers and bad ones.

Now, what makes a good customer? Or a bad one? There’s lots of criteria you can use to help but I’m going to focus on the most common. 

1. Repeat Business - How often do they come back and purchase your product or service? Would you consider them to be a regular customer or client? 

2. Influencers - When they have a good experience, do they talk about it? Are they open to sharing their experience on social media and do they follow through? For enterprise customers, are they comfortable with joint press releases, recommendations, social media mentions? 

3. Spend - Not all budgets are created equal, but of the budget they have, do they spend the bulk of it with your business? 

4. Service - How much time do you spend with them solving problems or dealing with issues? Are they constantly tying up your support channels? 

5. Up-sell & Cross-Sell - Are the current contacts in the organization willing to be ambassadors to help you open doors into other departments? Is there room to grow with this customer and sell multiple products or services across several department verticals? 

6. Deliverables - Are they buying your product or service for the right reasons? Are they aligned with the true value it brings to the table? 

7. Values - Are you and the customer aligned on your core values, sharing the same journey and goals? 

In order to put your customer in the “good” category, you should be able to answer the majority (6-7) of the above questions in the affirmative. If you can’t you should take a hard look at the value that customer brings to the table. 

Lastly, once you have performed this review with your current customer list, identify the ones that score the least. Any customers that score a 2 or below are most likely costing you more in resources and wasted time than what they bring to the table in value. It might make sense to fire those customers and go in search of higher-scoring ones to replace them. Your bottom line will thank you.