Big Impact With Big Effectivness

I've been reading (okay - listening to the book on tape) of Permission Marketing by Seth Godin while driving to and from work. I have to say, I've been a bit of a skeptic about several concepts he has, but when he mentioned the part that smart companies fire 70% of their customers I about jumped out of my car and screamed, "See world, I told you I was right!"

His point was that a smart company, through his permission marketing concepts, takes the best 30% of its clients and increases their sales volume so that the company actually profits more than with all 100% of it's clients while servicing them better. What really struck the chord with me when I heard it is this is exactly what we are attempting to do here at work.

My job is to take a start up business and help them become successful, or an existing business and help them expand. My difficulty is that we have to serve 276 clients in a year. Well obviously you can't generate success in 276 businesses in one year. However, I can take 10-15 businesses and pour my efforts into helping them become successful, and make sure that we service the remaining 260 clients to their satisfaction and requirements of the government.

The same concept that Seth uses when he says fire 70% of your customers. He is really saying become more effective with the other 30%. Don't shoot from the hip, look through the scope and line up your target.

As I meet today for lunch with the President and CEO of the Greater Colorado Springs Economic Development Corporation, this is going to be the thrust of my conversation: To help grow the economy in Colorado Springs, we need to focus on that smaller percentage that we can help become successful.

If you want to make a bigger impact, do it by being more effective with fewer companies.