I heard an interesting tidbit on the radio recently. The story was how many shopping malls are banning teenagers who are at the mall without a parent or guardian. The kicker was these malls showed an increase in sales after initiating this policy.
The next thing I did was Google this and found numerous stories on this subject, going back to 2006. In these days of easily transmitted fake news it made sense to verify the story (just like buyers and sellers verify information during due diligence).
As we start 2017 it’s good policy to do like these malls, and that is:
Know who you want to do business with (and don’t do business with those who don’t meet your criteria).
Using Pareto’s Principle as a guideline, 20% of your customers will cause 80% of your grief. And I’m sure the 20% on the other end of the spectrum provide 80% of your joy (and maybe even profit).
No matter what your business you can easily target customers by:
- Size (buying power) – For example, Porsche dealers aren’t going to do direct mail in low income neighborhoods. I’m not going to market to $50 million companies because I don’t have the people or processes to work in that market (just like I stay away from micro businesses, where the owner is the business).
- Location – some of us can have national or international customers. Others reach the service stress point if the customers are more than an hour away.
- Personality – as in personal relationships and buy-sell deals, being able to relate to customers goes a long way towards turning the 80-20 rule to the 95-5 rule. If you get along the chances of problems are minimized.
Know who you want to do business with, and don’t deviate from it.
“Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.” Henry David Thoreau
