Your clients are like big, tasty burritos. No, it’s not because they are wrapped in foil and served with chips and salsa. It is because each of your clients is made up of slightly different ingredients that make them, “them.” Ask your friends at the office how they like their favorite burrito. Chicken? Beef? Bowl or tortilla? Veggies? Guac (yes, it is extra)? The answers will be completely unique with different topping combinations (hopefully free of E-coli as well). How can the debate possibly be settled about which is the greatest combination of ingredients? Let’s take a deeper look at client success, data, and burritos to find the answer.
Client success staff and account managers alike will tell you the best clients are a pleasure to work with as well as profitable to the organization. Maybe even as much of a pleasure as America’s favorite Tex-Mex comfort food, but clients that are not a good fit take more time and can cause you to lose sight of the end goal. They’re usually less profitable too. Think of these clients like an abandoned piece of pizza on the New York subway (pizza rat is working really hard, but the pizza is not cooperating).
What makes a client a great-fit is different for every company. Perhaps for one B2B company, their best-fit clients are in the manufacturing vertical with revenue over $20M and utilizing a specific CRM and purchasing system. For another, ideal clients could be located in greater Chicago with 15-50 employees and an active social media marketing strategy. What are 3-4 data points that many of your company’s ideal clients have in common?
“In God we trust, all others must bring data.” – W. Edwards Deming
A great place to start identifying trends in client demographics is to ask your client success team to provide a list of your best clients (typically defined as clients who are actively using your products/services and who are engaging with your team). You’ll be surprised what just 10 great clients can provide in terms of data when CS and marketing alignment occurs!
- Geography
- Vertical
- Business model (i.e., B2B, B2C, both or B2B2C)
- Annual revenue
- Employee count
These are just a few examples of data that can be accessed quickly and examined to identify trends. If your company conducts this exercise across a handful of data points, I’m willing to bet a lunch on me that you will find a trend that you were not previously aware of (our office is a block from both Chipotle and Qdoba)!
Remember those delicious burritos that we were talking about earlier? There are exponential numbers of different combinations, but how powerful would it be if your organization noticed a trend toward the business equivalent of “chicken, cheese, and sour cream,” with your current clients? Is this every piece of the prospecting puzzle? No, but if your marketing team can now focus on prospects that have “chicken, cheese, and sour cream” as part of their greater “burrito order,” it immediately targets a more defined market that your business is well on its way to dominating! We want tasty burrito clients, not subway pizza clients, right?
Interested in learning more about how client success is a crucial piece of marketing? Check out, “Why Your Customers Are Your Most Valuable Marketing Assets.”
