The client base is an indispensable tool for managing a business, in particular, a company's sales. With its help, you can effectively predict future activities, improve the conditions for cooperation with existing partners, and attract new customers. But not always the presence of a wide customer base in a company promises it a high level of sales. Why?
To answer this question, one of the primary economic rules should be remembered: the Pareto principle. Its essence is that "80% of income is brought by 20% of customers." That is, work with the customer base should be aimed mainly at finding "quality" buyers, or, in other words, target customers.
Often, company managers enter into the client base all the counterparties with whom they have ever had to cooperate. In most cases, the transactions were one-off. Thus, the scale of the customer base is "inflated" to incredible proportions. If the work of managers is organized in a similar way, then the company does not have target customers and does not aim to find them. The time and energy of employees is wasted.
Analysis of the customer base should be carried out at least once every two years. The language of numbers will make it possible to give an objective assessment of the current situation. Database optimization can be done using ABC analysis.
The essence of this method comes down to ranking the list of customers - each of them is assigned a certain place in the general database according to a given criterion, which can be net profit or sales. Depending on this indicator, the buyer is assigned a category - A, B, C or D. Thus, it will be clear with which counterparties should be especially close cooperation.
The choice of target customers can be influenced by objective and subjective factors. Objective, for example, may be the scale or type of activity, subjective factors are the client's interest in the company's products, corporate culture, etc.
Of course, after the laborious process of optimizing the customer base, actionable solutions must follow. For example, carefully monitor the renewal of contracts, if necessary, reach a compromise by revising the pricing policy, establish friendly relations, and introduce bonus and incentive systems for key customers.
It is by working with the client base in the direction of its qualitative improvement that you can achieve a high level of sales. At the same time, without wasting human and time resources on consumers with small and rare orders.
