Expectations, I’ve had a few…

I’m am getting a little involved with this article at Joyent about sticking up for your team, even if that means saying no to a customer. It’s a topic close to my heart, especially as I start up a new project.

The crux of the problem is that a client who doesn’t understand what they are paying for needs to be educated; and that education actually costs the provider money, one way or another. If the cost of educating that client is more than that client is worth to the business when do you cut your losses?

Do you hope to have 99 easy clients for each hard one and have the many pay for the few (the typical approach) or do you show the hard one the door? What if the ratio was 999:1? 9999:1?

What’s the break even level? Is it worth it?

I don’t think there is a simple solution, each situation has to be evaluated individually. Before you go in the room, you need to know what you are willing to spend on educating the client. What proportion of the project is going to be invested in managing the client’s expectations. Who’s going to do it? How will it be done?

Joyent has massive archives of forum posts that deal with almost all the crazy things that can happen in their hosting services, they even have a wiki. Is it enough? For me, Yes. For others?

Even 499:1 is probably worth it…

Customer Sales

A Customer Sales report shows you the total sales figures, over a period of time, for each customer.

Refinements on this usually include:

• Show monthly sub-totals if the period specified spans two or more months.
• Allow filtering; for specific products, customers.

Use it to:

• Find out your best customers – Who should the business invest resources in (care about) the most.
• Confirm pricing breaks awarded to customers are reflected in their sales value to the business.
• Encourage mid-range customers to increase their spend by advising them of the benefits obtainable at the next spend level (price break) – They are already buying your (A, B, C) products, do they know you also sell D, E & F? Do they purchase them from your compeditors? Why aren’t they buying them from you?

You will need:

• Customers list
• Sales history (with links to the Customer list)