Mojzes Igor
By Dave Fellman
I'd like to propose a quick exercise for today. Draw a line down through the middle of a sheet of paper. On the left side of the line, list your three best customers, in order of their importance to your company. On the right side of the line, list the three most important factors you consider in deciding which are "good" customers, and which are not.
The point of the exercise is to compare the three customers you've listed to your definition of a "good" customer. If you see any conflict between what you're looking for in a customer and what you're getting from the ones you consider to be your best customers right now, I think you'll agree that you have a problem!
Defining "Good" Customers
What criteria did you choose to define a "good" customer? If you're like most printers, you probably started with sales volume. It's just about automatic to consider our biggest customers to be our best ones.
How about profit margins? I'd like to think that a reasonable margin of profit would be one of the factors every printer would choose. After all, the bottom line in your business is a healthy bottom line.
I'd be willing to bet that 99% of all printers will have volume and profit as the first two items on their list. The third factor? That will be more of an individual choice. Among the numerous possibilities, I'll suggest such things as loyalty, a reasonable expectation of quality and service, a general ease of doing business with, and good bill-paying performance.
What If?
It’s important to take a hard, objective look at your current customers—especially the ones you now consider to be your best customers—to see how they compare to your list of “good” customer factors. And what if they don’t? OK, the opposite of a “good” customer is a “bad” one, and here’s my simple definition of a bad customer: They’re more trouble than they’re worth!
If you have customers in that category, you have to be willing to do something about it!
What would that entail? There are two ways to approach the more trouble than they’re worth equation. One is to reduce the amount of trouble. The other is to increase the amount of worth. The latter is the easiest to accomplish, just raise the prices you quote and charge them. The former is probably better strategy, though. First, give some thought to exactly why they’re more trouble than they’re worth. Second, go talk to them about that. It’s often possible to change “bad” customer behavior through simple conversation.
If not, I recommend the raising the prices route.
Bad Advice?
I know that some will consider that bad advice, being convinced that all you’d accomplish by raising prices in cases like this would be to lose the customer.
But here’s the key question: Even in you did lose the customer, would you be better off if you were then able to take the resources you were using on the “bad” customer and apply them to the development of a better one? By resources, I mean front-end sales and customer service time and effort, production time, and “back-end” administrative and problem-solving time and effort.
If the answer is yes, you can afford to lose that customer! In fact, it’s the best business decision for you!
Dave Fellman is the president of David Fellman & Associates, Cary, NC, a sales and marketing consulting firm serving numerous segments of the graphic arts industry. Contact Dave by phone at 919-363-4068 or by e-mail at dmf@davefellman.com. Visit his website at www.davefellman.com.