(Note: In Spring 2006 I worked closely with two companies preparing for Initial Public Offerings. This transcript is from a curated series of late-night sessions I recorded to train the corporate marketing and sales teams. In these private trainings I answered their specific questions about the strategies and tactics (and art) of establishing your branding and positioning as unique and special, to give you the edge in a crowded marketplace. These have never been shared publicly before now, and even though the recording quality is poor there are some golden nuggets of information in each that will expand your understanding of these key topics as well.)
This section is about Firing Customers. It’s a very interesting concept.
But if you really want to experience quantum growth in your business, one of the things that you have to be willing to do is to just let go, to look at who you have as customers right now that, in terms of your business and where you want it to go, really don’t fit in, they don’t fit into the loop.
These are the high-maintenance ones, the ones that are occupying your time, the ones that create problems, create fires.
In many cases, they may be nice people, they may be wonderful people, but they just want your time. They want to suck away your staff’s resources, your time. And, you know, along the way, you’ve got to be willing to offend some.
And to fire some. And you can do this a lot of different ways.
You can have a conversation with them.
Depending on who they are, depending on your business, you can create company policies and put out new policies.
You can create different levels in your business. So that at a certain level, all they get is recordings and frequently asked questions and things like that. On the next level up, they get group things. On the next level up, they get private things… but no longer does everybody get kind of the generic program.
Your policies and procedures, as I said, can change.
Where, if there’s issues and problems, instead of always being on call, you’re able to answer them between 10 to 12. During the day. Or you answer them within 48 hours, or whatever.
You can use technology can push people towards email, for example. Because again, you’re creating layers there, people have the access, but it’s not just being able to pick up the phone and take up your time.
Now, in in looking at all of this, though, for some people it just makes sense. Along the way, you’ve just got to say, “You know, we don’t need this person.” You can do it rudely or you can do it nicely.
You can do it nicely, you can refund their money, you can refer them to somebody else, you can share with them that, you know, ”This isn’t working,” and that you really feel like they’re not happy. You can simply refuse to sell them anything else. I mean, there’s a lot of things that you can do.
And don’t worry about the repercussions. Because where you need to be at is a place that can’t carry everybody that you have right now. And that can include the people who work IN the company as well as your clients.
Some of them can’t make the transition, some of them are very happy with the status quo. They like being able to have their buddy on the other end of the line, call up and waste time when that person could be helping five or 10 other people, or selling — if your customer service also sells, which I don’t recommend — but servicing or selling other people.
So, look very carefully at that database of cluster of customers that you have. Because that database has some “mines” along the way. And those mines are ones that you need to figure out how you will exclude them out of the future of your company so that they do not continue to drag it down.
For more on this topic see also The Pareto Principle & Your Customers and Exclusionary Marketing.
Self-exclusion is as part of that process. Firing customers who you don’t want in that loop is the other part.
There are 350 million people in this country… there’s more than enough for you to have in your business… IF you learn to target the ones you want. exclude the ones you don’t want, and fire the ones who’s slip in through the cracks that you don’t want.
For more on this topic see also Decide Who You DON’T Want First! and Your Ideal Client
