Use the CORE™ Strategy for High Value Clients
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been helping several founders reevaluate their client strategies. A common thread? Too much time and energy spent on low-value accounts.
In the pursuit of more clients, they frequently neglect the value of the new clients they bring in and can neglect their existing clients. Time and resources can be drained servicing many small clients, compared with the returns from servicing less clients that are high value to your business.
The CORE™ Strategy will give you a focus on the key elements to help grow your business from your existing client base.
C – Clients
- Identify high value clients based on revenue and profitability. Make sure you also identify those clients who you enjoy working with, and who are a good fit for your business growth goals.
- Assess where time and resources are being directed (for both you and your team), and identify those clients that drain resources and cost you money to service. These can be large high value clients, but invariably they are the lower value, smaller clients.
- Use this information to fine-tune your Ideal Client Profile, so you can start focusing on adding value to your best existing clients. Use this profile to focus on attracting more of the same type of clients rather than just more of any type/size of client.
O – Offer
- Give premium clients your best offers and optimise pricing to match the value provided. Withdraw products and services that were more appropriate for your lower value clients.
- Find out what else you could be doing for your best clients, to add more value to them. This will grow your business.
R- Relationship
- Shift you focus to nurturing high-value clients while gradually transitioning away from others.
- Reassess the Customer Experience and how you build on the relationship at each stage.
If you have the right clients and the right offer (the product or service that they want), but a weak relationship, you will have risk of defection.
If you have the right clients and a strong relationship, but you launch a new product or service that is not what they want, you will get silence from these clients. They won’t leave, but they won’t respond to a new offer that isn’t a fit.
If you have a strong relationship with the wrong clients (as in, not your ideal clients), and an offer that would be attractive to the right clients, then you won’t sell to the wrong clients, but based on the strong relationship they may give you referrals to others.
E- Expansion
I haven’t forgotten about the ‘E’!
When you have all three elements in place, you will have expansion. Your business will grow if you focus on nurturing relationships and continuing to deliver value to your best clients. They will then provide the template for what new client acquisition needs to look like.
Action step: Take 30 minutes this week to review your client base, your offers (and pricing), and the strength of your relationships with each.
