All Clients Are Not the Same

In theory, it sounds like a great idea to treat all of your clients equal. The problem is they are NOT equal. They are NOT the same.
 
If you segment your client list based on their spending, you will find that the top 5% of your clients give you 40% of your sales, the next 15% give you another 40% of your sales, and the other 80% of your clients give you only 20% of your sales. It looks like this:
 
                  TOP 5%                40% OF SALES             PLATINUM
                  NEXT 15%            40% OF SALES             GOLD
                  ALL OTHERS       20% OF SALES             Your Clients
 
We call the top two tiers our Platinum and Gold clients. They are the clients we build our entire business around. Their interests, pain, and desires are what fuel our principles as a business. 
 
You will eventually think of these as three buckets, and it is critical you know which clients are in which buckets. And this list segmentation follows the 80/20 rule, or Pareto Principle, which we will talk about in detail later. It says that 80% of your results (sales) come from 20% of your clients. And this is true not just with drycleaners, but is true in almost every business.
 
You might also notice that the third bucket, which consists of 80% of your clients, is where all the complaining, comes from. They view your services as a cost. A transaction. Like getting an oil change. And always want it cheaper. Nothing is ever good enough. Don’t build your business around those clients. Build it around your top 20%.
 
Work with your point of sale (POS) computer company to help you create these three separate buckets. Most will allow you to label each group so that your team knows who is in each bucket. For new clients, you will have to give it 60-90 days before you decide which bucket they are in.