Give your customers a performance review – StartupSmart

We’ve all got customers that get on our nerves. Yes, they spend money with us. Yes, we like their cashflow. But the demands they make and the time they take up are enough to make us wish they’d go elsewhere.

To figure out whether it is in fact time to sever ties with a customer, why not conduct a little review?

Sit down and work out exactly how much revenue each customer contributed to your business in the last 12 months.

Now, try and make a rough estimate of the amount of time you devoted to that customer. Ask you staff to help with this and try to make it as accurate as possible. Email records detailing complaints or problems could also assist.

This exercise will allow you to get a very, very basic sense of which customers are drags on your business – the ones who don’t buy much, but chew up a lot of resources.

If you’ve got a particularly problematic customer, it’s potentially time to end your relationship.

But be careful about this. A customer you think is problematic may actually have some valid points about problems within your business.

Get it done – today!