Do You Know Your Top Customers?

Every business has customers, and while they all are important, most entrepreneurs will agree that some customers value your business more than others. This may be due to the amount of revenue they bring in, their ability to refer new customers to you, the interesting challenges of the business, or another factor. It makes sense to identify these people so you can spend more time with them or at least acknowledge them in some way.

How do you find out which customers have generated the most revenue with you? If you store data in your accounting system, you can run a report to generate the data you need.  In QuickBooks, the report is called the Income by Customer Summary Report.  In Xero, it’s called Income by Contact. If you do not store data in your accounting system, you may be able to generate a report from your billing system, shopping cart, or point-of-sale system.

The reports look like this: each row holds the customer name and the Income column holds total revenue. If your system allows you to sort the revenue field, do this in descending order. If not, you can export the data to Excel and then sort it.

Once you’ve sorted the data, the answer is right in front of you.  Your top customers based on revenue will show in order. These are the people you may want to consider spending more time with. Schedule periodic lunches with them, give them a call on a regular basis, and send them a gift or handwritten thank you note once in a while.  The report helps you organize your connection points so you don’t miss an opportunity to reach out to an important customer.

Run this report on a regular basis so that you’re focused on nurturing the most important relationships in your business. You can also look at trends to see if you’re losing revenue over time or gaining revenue with new customers. You can reach out to customers who are spending less with you to try to save the relationship before it’s too late.  And you can get to know new customers who are growing with you so that you can acquire even more business.

Make this report a regular activity in your business to stay close to what your customers are doing with you.