Discovering your most valuable customers | ncorde
Everything in small business begins and ends with the customer. It’s your job to make customers happy. And that’s what makes your business money, is making your customers happy. Giving them what they want, maybe even going beyond what they want. But, not all customers are created equal.
In this post, I want to walk you through the steps of how to find your most valuable customers, in other words, your best customers.
Your MVC, or most valuable customer, is the profile of the kind of person who is best to do business with. Now, not every business has the same most valuable customer. It’s not that there are good people and bad people, it’s just that there are people who are a better fit for your business than others.
You have to get rid of some customers. Of course, you may think it’s a good idea to keep all your customers, but in fact, many of them are costing you money. By understanding which ones are the most profitable and keeping them happy, you can significantly improve your bottom line.
Let’s start by finding your MVCs.
Starting by writing down profiles of your top customers that you do business with, currently.
Example Customer profile
- Demographics
- Age
- Gender
- Income
- Geography
- Other
- Psychographic
- Activities
- Interests
- Opinions
- Attitudes
- Values
You can study your existing customer to find out which of those customers can find in your MVCs category. However, if you don’t have any customers yet if you just started your business list, imagine the most valuable customers in your mind with whom you’d like to do business. Now think about those customers, imagine them in your mind.
Think of their demographics, come up with the commonalities some of your customers. What is their general age range? Which gender do they lend toward, male or female? What is their general income? Where do they live in terms of geography, and what other features demographics wise do they share in common? Now keep in mind that when we’re hiring people or for most other purposes, we don’t want to discriminate based on age or gender.
From a marketing perspective identifying your customers, not only is it appropriate, it’s necessary because you want to focus all of your marketing, all of your sales on a particular type of person.
Let’s take a look at their psycho-graphics. Now, what does that big word mean? Psycho-graphics simply represent what’s going on in their head. What’s their psychology? Write down what are the activities that your customer will share in common? What is their interest, what kind of hobbies are they involved in? What opinions do they have or do they lean towards a particular political party or another? What are their attitudes about life in general, and what values do they share in common? By clearly identifying your most valuable customer, you’ll make it easier to sell to them, to cater everything about the customer experience to their unique needs.
Identifying that most valuable customer clearly, is the foundation for running a successful small business.
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