“If the wind will not serve, take to the oars.”

— Latin proverb.

Ideally, you want profitable customers pounding down your door, demanding your products and services to the point you can't deliver anymore. Customers are so loyal that they ignore small mistakes and work with you on more significant projects.

Imagine How Much Revenue You Will Generate With Even a Handful of Profitable Customers

Of course, you actually do! These customers pay, stay, and refer. They are the most profitable customers who you build a relationship over time.

These customers will accept you as you are, but most often don't represent a large enough segment of your customer base to sustain your business.

By definition, a profitable customer produces more revenue than the cost to serve them. They are easy to reach, excited about what you offer, and make decisions quickly.

Profitable customers don't complain, nickel and dime, and lack other bad habits that your worst customers have today. They are the opposite of those customers who drain your energy and pockets.

So when these customers aren't knocking on your door, you need to find them. These profitable customers won't always be buying, often you'll also need to seek out customers like them outside your current base.

Do This To Find Profitable Customers (And Focus On Top Buyers Over Anyone Else)

The good news is you can find profitable customers in your current customer base, then systematically clone them in the marketplace. This means growing your business with the most ideal target market.

Here are a number of ideas for seeking out new high-value profitable customers:

1. Ask existing customers for qualified referrals. Use specific questions to identify profitable customers inside your customer's sphere of influence. These questions are developed by your sales qualification funnel and are designed to help your customers identify people they know who will most likely become buyers.
2. Harvest your strategic partner's customer base. Swap mailing lists with your strategic partners, do co-op mailings, or joint promotions that leverage the credibility of partner relationships. This could include endorsements or even product bundles depending on what you offer the customer.
3. Visit the places suspect for customers who fit your profitable criteria. The key is to reach those who are likely to have the same characteristics as your profitable customers but have never heard of you. Unless you have a 100% market share, there are some customers that haven't heard of you yet. Use trade publications, and educational events, and work the trade shows.
4. Add more selling channels based on past experience in other industries. Computer hardware had success with distributors and resellers who integrated components, which would the same work for your manufacturing equipment. Borrow ideas from other industries to introduce more ways to sell your product to end-users.
5. Bundle commonly used services even if you aren't the primary provider. Add value to what you do by inviting service partners to integrate your product or enhance your services. Focus on those things that significantly improve the customer's return on investment. Give the customer choices based on their individual desires.
6. Use qualification tools to get more customers to raise their hands. Turn your website and marketing materials into qualification tools that get prospects to tell you what they want. Improve the quality of your market research and reach out to as many prospects as possible with lower-cost marketing tools.

When you have profitable customers you can grow a business fast. These customers are ideally suited for what you offer, rather than hoping for customers haphazardly. These insights are about strategic marketing.

Part of increasing your influence is having the means to do so. Building business relationships around the right kind of customers matters. Specific customers who are profitable are the shortest path to success.

Use these insights to get started today!