Every business has customers, and while all customers are important, most entrepreneurs will agree that some customers are more important than others. This may be due to the amount of revenue the customer brings in, their ability to refer new clients to you, the interesting challenges of the customer, or another factor. Your Orange County Bookkeeper wants to help you identify these clients so you can spend more time with them or at least acknowledge them in some way.
How do you find out which clients have generated the most revenue with you? If you store customer data in your accounting system, you can run a report to generate the data you need. In QuickBooks, the report is called the Income by Customer Summary Report. In Xero, it is called Income by Contact. If you do not store customer data in your accounting system, you may be able to generate a report from your billing system, shopping cart, or point-of-sale system.
An income by customer report would look like this: each row holds the customer name and the Income column holds total revenue by the customer. If your system allows you to sort the revenue field, do this in descending order. If not, you can export the data to Excel and sort it in Excel.
Once you have sorted the data, the answer is right in front of you. Your top customers based on revenue will show in order. The customers at the top of the report are the ones that you may want to consider spending more time with. Schedule periodic lunches with them, give them a call on a regular basis, and send them a gift or thank you note periodically. An income by customer summary report helps you organize your connection points with your top clients so you do not miss an opportunity or forget to reach out to an important customer.
Run this report on a regular basis so that you stay focused on nurturing the most important relationships in your business. With this handy report, you can examine revenue trends with new and existing clients, recognize and reach out to clients that are spending less with you to try to identify other services that they can utilize, and set time aside to get to know new clients that are growing with you. Investing in your core clients creates potential for business growth through strong relationships and favorable referrals.
Your favorite Orange County Bookkeeper like Team One Accounting can help make this report for you and help your business to stay close to your most valued customers.
