Not all customers are equal. Some create profit. Others destroy it. Identifying the difference transforms your business.



Your profit margins vary wildly by customer. Your financial performance improves dramatically when you segment by profitability.

The exercise every business owner needs: Rank your customers by gross margin percentage and behavior quality.

Top 20%: High margin, low maintenance, pay on time, refer others, appreciate your value.

Middle 60%: Acceptable margins, reasonable to work with, generally positive.

Bottom 20%: Low margin, high maintenance, slow pay, constant complaints, never refer.

Your business efficiency suffers from the bottom 20%. They consume disproportionate time, energy, and emotional bandwidth. They erode your team's morale. They prevent you from serving your best customers well.

The strategic move: Fire them. Raise their prices significantly. If they accept, great-they're now profitable. If they leave, better-you freed capacity for customers who value you.

One service business identified their worst 15 customers. Combined, they generated 12% of revenue but consumed 35% of management time and created 60% of customer service issues.

Fired all 15. Revenue dropped 12%. Net profit increased 23%. Owner got weekends back.

Your profitability strategies must include customer quality management. Your earnings improvement accelerates when you stop serving customers who destroy value.

Most business owners are terrified to fire customers. They're addicted to revenue, even when it's unprofitable revenue.

You're being strategic. Recognizing that not all revenue is good revenue. Protecting your margins, your team, and your sanity by serving only customers who value what you do.

Business Owners hire Next Step CFO to double and triple their profit using business and financial strategies that their competition isn't doing.