by Mike Biwer, Cavallo CEO
As a distributor, if you don’t have full visibility into how profitable your customers’ orders really are, your most valuable customers can look just like everyone else until it’s too late.
Imagine you’re packing a backpack for a long hiking trip, and you have room for one more item. One option is a water bottle. The other is a bag of rocks.
In a situation like this, it’s easy to recognize value.
But when you’re caught up in the day-to-day of growing a business, it’s hard not to focus on holding onto every customer, even when some add more weight than value. Many distributors focus on preventing customer turnover without asking a more important question: Which customers create profit?
When it comes to preventing customer turnover, focus on two things. First, recognize when customers enter the “at-risk” zone — changing their behavior in ways that show up in order size, frequency, or…