Comments on: Can You Fire Your Worst Customers? http://www.mspmentor.net/2008/07/30/you-need-to-fire-your-worst-customers/ Managed Services & Cloud Services Blog for VARs & MSPs Tue, 14 Feb 2012 15:37:02 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Lane Smith http://www.mspmentor.net/2008/07/30/you-need-to-fire-your-worst-customers/comment-page-1/#comment-23253 Lane Smith Wed, 30 Jul 2008 19:38:35 +0000 http://www.mspmentor.net/2008/07/30/you-need-to-fire-your-worst-customers/#comment-23253 I agree with Erick, you can and absolutely move your customers up to the top of the pyramid. As you grow your business you tend to be more selective with new customers, tighten your SLA and as such increase your profitability. So the question of what to do with these customers becomes more and more relevant as you grow. One concept would be to just fire them. Unfortunately, this will generally end up with a company that is not very happy with you and could potentially have a negative impact when prospecting. A couple alternatives to this would be to go back to these customers with a plan that will move them up the the "B" level customer in regards to profitability. This will work with maybe 1/3 of them, but what about the others? Perhaps you know of another MSP in your area that is at an earlier stage than you and might consider these customers "A" customers? If you can find somone that you are comfortable with then I would suggest working with them on a program to "transfer" these customers to them. This can be a win-win-win for all three companies. You have increased your profits as you have "fired" your "C" customers, the customer does not loose support completely, rather they are introduced to a company that is very happy to work with them and the other MSP has just been handed a new customer list with a minimal sales cycle. I agree with Erick, you can and absolutely move your customers up to the top of the pyramid. As you grow your business you tend to be more selective with new customers, tighten your SLA and as such increase your profitability.

So the question of what to do with these customers becomes more and more relevant as you grow. One concept would be to just fire them. Unfortunately, this will generally end up with a company that is not very happy with you and could potentially have a negative impact when prospecting.

A couple alternatives to this would be to go back to these customers with a plan that will move them up the the “B” level customer in regards to profitability. This will work with maybe 1/3 of them, but what about the others?

Perhaps you know of another MSP in your area that is at an earlier stage than you and might consider these customers “A” customers? If you can find somone that you are comfortable with then I would suggest working with them on a program to “transfer” these customers to them.

This can be a win-win-win for all three companies. You have increased your profits as you have “fired” your “C” customers, the customer does not loose support completely, rather they are introduced to a company that is very happy to work with them and the other MSP has just been handed a new customer list with a minimal sales cycle.

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