There are numerous benefits for identifying the top 20 percent of your clients. Taking care of them ensures their loyalty and return Business. Read more to learn how to recognize and reward your best clients.

You know what makes your organization unique. You’ve identified why your customers value your products or services over the competition. With those fundamental but critical items in place you’re ready to focus on you customers. Are you clear on who your best customers are? Crystal clear?

As a general rule you want to spend about 80 percent of your time on your clients who are the most profitable and embrace your reason for existence. This usually works out to be the top 20 percent of your customers. These are the people who will give you the largest profit margin for your efforts.

There are other benefits for identifying your top 20 percent. You can confidently implement strategies that:

• eliminate spending too much time on those who give you the least amount of return for your efforts.

• create targeted marketing campaigns for specific customer Categories.

• establish incentive programs to move less active customers into your top range.

• develop a relationship package to secure relations with your valued customer groups (such as a bronze, silver, gold or platinum level).

You can also assign specialists to focus on specific aspects of your customer segments. These can include someone dedicated to the large accounts and strategic alliances, a relationship manager responsible for managing current clients and up selling, and a hunter who looks for new business where no current relationship exists between a customer and your organization.

To choose the top 20 percent of your customers, you have to segment your customers into niche categories. It’s quite possible to have multiple categories each with their own top 20 percent. Here are twenty questions to help you accomplish the task.

1. Where is the revenue coming from?
2. What are your customers passionate about?
3. Who gives you the greatest profit margins?
4. How do they purchase? (Credit, cash, corporate account, checks, PayPal.)
5. Where do they purchase (Brick and mortar, online, catalog.)
6. What do they purchase? (Which services? Which products?)
7. What are their purchasing patterns? (Once a year, many small items, a few larger items.)
8. Where do they live? (In an apartment, condo, city, suburb, development, out-of-state.)
9. Where do they work? (In a home office, downtown, office park, mom & pop store.)
10. What attributes do they possess (Consistent, fickle, committed, particular, loyal.)
11. What types of people, places or things do they like?
12. What do they value?
13. What do they read?
14. When do they read it?
15. Where do they read?
16. What types of meetings, groups or classes do they attend?
17. What do they value? (Education, money, service, philanthropy.)
18. Who complains the most?
19. What else do they purchase?

And most important,

20. What type of people are you attracting to your business?