Decoupling Plans Start Now
The clamour for restorative justice grows. Whilst all China do is follow the totalitarian murderous dictatorship playbook (esp. untruth, spin & disinformation chapter) and have the gall to claim the rest of the world are bullying them. Which only goes to prove how much we must stand up to their bullying of both us and their oppressed people.
When dealing with this major trading partner we can surely no longer close our eyes and clutch the money.
The chances of them suddenly changing the terms of how we do business to be horribly stacked against us and even more opaque and uncollaborative and thieving of our tech and IP than they are now are surely way less odds than us thinking last year we’d now be suffering a global pandemic.
“Decoupling” – how to unravel and prosper – an issue pre-dating the covidian wastelands.
A question that occurs for our solution selling sphere, is how reliant are we on a customer we really ought not have.
The reasons for this could be manifold.
The classic Pareto may come into view. Is there a client, or groups of client, that take up eighty percent of our time, (anywhere along the service scale all the way along to firefighting), yet provide only twenty percent of our payments?
There are also many sources for such pain.
Where the imbalance in size is transmitted to a power game. Unreasonable or inappropriate requests grow. Submerging and misdirecting us. Draining our energy and resolve. Going where we shouldn’t.
And that’s without the necessary steeling yourself to cast loose the bad payers.
Yes, the customer is king. Yet the famed adage, ‘the customer is always right’ is a false guiding star. Not all customers are the right customers. I’ve blogged before on the occasional need for a ‘customer cull’. In part, from finding that ideal client profiles morph as you develop your products and services and transition from one stage of growth to another.
Is the coronavirus blighted world one where we must recalibrate our own customer portfolio?
When faced with such quandary myself in the past, I assigned specific resource to handling the miscreant account. They knew it was a tough job. I made sure they accepted this and went in eyes fully open. I realised that the client had to go, and stated our intent to ‘manage’ them out our business in as orderly a fashion as possible. In the meantime, Sales must replace the imminent hole in revenues. Forward cost planning commensurate with amended capital inflows.
Taken as an opportunity to reset how you ought target, it becomes noticeable how what might be viewed as a restriction in selling waters, actually becomes a healthier state through more lasered targeting.
As is often the case, it is not thinking outside the box which yields greater treasures, but thinking inside a shrunken one.
Is there chance now for a similar growth-propelling decoupling of your own?