You can’t. This is why some people are bothered by what I find to be an essential business practice. The fact that #43 might be better than #38 does not lessen the value of the exercise.
Most businesses have prospective customers which fall right into their sweet spot. In Envysion’s sweet spot are growing fast-casual franchises which have hundreds of store locations. Zayo Bandwidth’s has carriers and Internet/media companies in geographies served by its network. What is your sweet spot?
Once the middle of your fairway is clearly defined, your most important customers (both existing and prospects) can be identified. The size of your target list varies by situation; for discussion purposes, let’s use 300.
So the exercise goes like this: Simply stack rank the top ~300 based on one simple parameter—how important is this customer to the ongoing success of your business? I know this is subjective, but at the end of the day, it is the only parameter that matters. By “Stack Rank”, I am being quite literal. Which is #1? Which is #15? Which is #38? Which is #43?
The key is to complete this list top to bottom. It only needs to be approximately right. That is, #38 should certainly be more important to the company’s success than #83, but reasonable people can have different opinions about whether #43 should have been above #38.
In the next entry on this topic, I will discuss why this exercise needs to be a process, not a one-time event. In later posts, I will discuss why this exercise is so helpful and how it can be used to focus company resources.
