In my career, I’ve closely worked with and managed all kinds of clients. Some gaveus that vital push, helping us become who we are. Some challenged our belief systems and shaped our worldview.
Many became lifelong friends and many more became LinkedIn contacts. Choosing right customers and having a framework to distill this art can be of great help, specially for services companies.
Seth Godin says “Choose your customers, choose your future.” Most of us believe that customers choose us. After having worked with over 200 customers across industries and geographies I have come to realize that companies chose customers just as much as customers chose companies.
So, customers fall in to broadly 4 buckets:
Difficult and no business: Logically, this is an easy one. You don’t want to spend cycles in a lose-lose situation. But it takes discipline to walk away and it is a hard decision we are forced to make once in a while. I have realized, chanting ‘Scrooge’ 10 times before taking this call helps lower the burden.
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[…] groups – where age is just an indicative number but stages are more important, similar to how the 2*2 customer matrix I had built to help choose your customers. This is important in respects – one is from the angle […]
[…] – where age is just an indicative number but the stages are more important, similar to how the 2*2 customer matrix I had built to help choose your customers. This is important in two respects – first, from the […]
[…] – where age is just an indicative number but the stages are more important, similar to how the 2*2 customer matrix I had built to help choose your customers.This is important in two respects – first, from the […]