Absolutely. When I was brokering deals I noticed MAJOR 80/20 type stuff. Usually was about 90/10 spread out over the 1.5 year I did it (it varied...some months it was 1 client doing all revenue...then other months a few small deals with 1 or 2 big ones doing 90% of the money). The bigger thing I'd analyze in your case since it seems you have a larger amount of clients is seeing what services those top people usually bought/hired you for and then seeing if the lower end people either A. Need those services B. What they bought instead. Focus on the ~5-10 services that those bigger deals brought then double down on those. Thats what helped me at least. I noticed almost all my aggravation and "busy work" was with smaller people or people tire kicking my brokering business. Even now as my business evolved...almost all my stress came from "startup deals" where the deal was starting something from scratch. I've basically eliminated all of those to avoid the grief they caused me.
Yeah that's such a good point. I notice more clients/deals are from my Asana Consulting. However, it's still worth offering the other services. I'm now looking at sub-contracting out the smaller clients who only want a few hours of calls. Will see how it goes. Thanks for the comment!
Youre welcome buddy. I really dig your blog :) I found it originally off of book reviews and been reading a while. We do a lot of similar stuff in how we think but that calendly article you have really opened my eyes on a few gaps. As well as that "work fractal" idea you linked to. Pretty mind blowing :)
I did this with my own business a few years ago, but I looked at net profit per customer. To estimate net profit per customer, I divided my total overhead by the number of transactions we completed in the year. Then I subtracted the cost of each transaction (multiplied by the number of transactions for each customer) from the total gross profit of each customer, and got something close to 80/20. Even better I found 10 customers who were costing me money, so I took action to make them more profitable.
I run into this type on analysis with my clients every now and then and I've come to a more detailed solution. I zoom into the 80/20 and get something like this 50-30/15-5, sometimes it applies even better, 5% of customers make up to 50% of income. For most businesses to get rid of the bottom 20 or 5 is not even thinkable, even if that means less effort. What I recommend is to understand the behavior of the middle 30% and 15% (2nd and 3rd tier) so you can make them to act like one of the top 5% in the case of the 2nd tier and prevent them to move down. Does it make sense?
The bigger thing I'd analyze in your case since it seems you have a larger amount of clients is seeing what services those top people usually bought/hired you for and then seeing if the lower end people either
A. Need those services
B. What they bought instead.
Focus on the ~5-10 services that those bigger deals brought then double down on those.
Thats what helped me at least. I noticed almost all my aggravation and "busy work" was with smaller people or people tire kicking my brokering business.
Even now as my business evolved...almost all my stress came from "startup deals" where the deal was starting something from scratch. I've basically eliminated all of those to avoid the grief they caused me.
I found it originally off of book reviews and been reading a while.
We do a lot of similar stuff in how we think but that calendly article you have really opened my eyes on a few gaps. As well as that "work fractal" idea you linked to.
Pretty mind blowing :)
Does it make sense?