Cross-dressing customers

One of the essential elements of the Breakthrough approach to growth is to declutter. And when it comes to customers, decluttering your business of your D class is a prerequisite for growth.

We all know this, right? We all know that:

• Your D’s take twice as much time and produce a fraction of the value of an A
• The time they steal from you is time you cannot spend on your A class
• They cannot be satisfied
• Your staff hate them
• They are not good for your brand
• Their referrals are just like them

They are, in short, just bad business. So why do we allow them to clog our business?

Here are the usual excuses (not reasons, excuses):

• They make a contribution to overheads
• They were referred by an A
• I don’t like to say no
• I once had someone who started out as a D but they turned into a genuine A

This last one is the most insidious argument. You just never know which of these frogs could turn into a prince. But you can kiss an awful lot of frogs before you finally realise that they are just frogs.

If you’re keeping your D’s because you think that one day they might turn into A’s, stop fooling yourself: your D’s are not A’s in drag. They’re just D’s, which stands (among other things) for Desperate.