There’s a lot of debate in the business world on whether every customer should be a sought after one. I take a different approach — I say the customer takes care of itself.
The original view on customers was a simple one: the customer is always right. It makes logical sense — customers mean revenue, which means profit, which means staying in business. To this day, some of the biggest CEOs in the game (such as Jeff Bezos) treat this original vision as gospel. It’s simple, appealing, and effective.
However, as time went on, we realized that life wasn’t quite so simple. Angry or relentless customers can cause drain on employees, lowering the quality of their performance. There’s also the fact that not all customers are created equal — some customers have the potential to give more revenue than others. And so the viewpoint changed: the customer may always be right for cheap, mass produced sectors (such as food service or retail) but for more complicated sectors things require a more nuanced approach.
So, what’s the answer here? Well, I would say that the right customers will come to you, assuming you already have a good product and marketing plan.
Think about it this way: say you have a fitness company targeting bodybuilders. Well, assuming that you’re bodybuilders yourselves, you’ll know how to interact with this demographic. You’ll be attracting the customer base you want naturally.
Now, where this vision really plays out is in the next step: What do you do with everyone else? Well, they aren’t your focus. That doesn’t mean to reject these customers outright (there could be future bodybuilders amongst them!), but don’t try every move in the book to entice them. Let them come in, browse, pick up a few items, and go on their way. And if they start coming back for more, then you’ll know they’re a keeper.
