You are influenced most by those you surround yourself with. This includes your clients and/or customers. Combine this with Pareto’s Law (80/20 rule) and it becomes very apparent that you need to pick/target customers and clients carefully.
Sales and marketing goes beyond just garnering as much new business as possible. The reason being, your customer service people will implode if you do not do it wisely. Based on Pareto’s Law, 80% of your volume will come from 20% of your customers/clients. Not defining who you can best serve and most want to serve leads to serving any and everyone who will have you.
Just as 80% of your volume will come from 20% of your customers, 80% of complaints will spew from 20% of client projects. So does it not serve everyone, especially the customer relations team to plan upfront rather than clean up at the backend? Of course it does.
Taking the time to develop a solid target demographic pays off not only in sales, it pays off in customer service. Like Roger Staubach said, “There are no traffic jams along the extra mile.” Planning upfront who you will target is the first steps along that extra mile.