subject: Do you Choose your customers or do They choose you? [print this page] From the start of my first business (I successfully started, bought, and operated 4 companies with a total gross revenue of 50 million dollars), I selected my customers. Leading your company means that you must choose your customersnot visa versa.
There's more to finding the right customers than looking them up on Google!
Choosing potential customers takes time, research, and logic. When I started my first businessmanufacturing tennis dressesI thought about who I wanted to sell and came up with Saks Fifth Avenue! That turned out to be a "game changer" for my fledgling company.
Some of the benefits to choosing your customers include:
A. If you do ample research in advance you will know what you are gettingif a customer selects you, look out or you might end up with a customer that is undesirable, (bad credit, price shopper, abusive, etc.), who will take up too much of your time and shift your focus from growing your company to constantly dealing with a problem.
B. You will be able to determine,( if you pay close attention to the interaction between you and the prospective customer), whether your targeted customer will be loyal to you.
One of the best ways to grow your sales is to make sure once you get a customer you keep them. Only you can control how you service a customerbut a customer must come to the table with a desire to establish a long term relationship up front. If they are merely "picking you off" once in awhile, those are not the kind of customers you want to cultivate. Yes, we all take customers that are not "ideal", but if you know in advance what qualities you are looking for, and try to find those types of prospects, you will be way far ahead of the pack.
Do you Choose your customers or do They choose you?
