With cross-selling, as with all business development activity, you need to focus your energy and resources on the client sectors that deliver the best potential return; these are your top 20 percent. Remember that Pareto’s Law tells us that 80% of your potential income comes from just 20 percent of your clients.

So regardless of how long you’ve been in business, to classify clients properly is one of the most important actions you can take. It allows you to identify priorities in making business decisions. Categorizing also improves retention rates and protects your most valuable clients from your competitors.

Your ideal clients (your 20 percent) are not necessarily those that produce the most revenue. They are those who you know to have the highest growth potential. This is where your time and energy needs to be focused.

Four client classifications

The four categories of clients are A,B,C and ‘Mega’ (or key) clients:

1. Category A - your top 5 percent of clients, by revenue (and potential future revenue).

   
   Mega category - a subset of category A; the top 2 percent of your accounts.
   
   

2. Category B - your next 15 percent of clients, by revenue.
   
   
3. Category C - the remaining 80 percent of your clients.
   
   

Your action points:

1. Identify this 20% segment in your customer database.
2. Create a profile or ‘persona’ of your typical ‘ideal client’. You may need to create one for each of your primary customer segments.
3. Create a visual representation to help your team understand who they need to target.

By defining your ideal client’s persona you are helping to pin-point the people who matter most to your business. You can then focus your resources on marketing to them, and to people like them.