Take ten… It’s November…

Take ten… And count them

Ask Any savvy soaper to name his top ten customers and he’ll rattle them off from memory. And chances are that he can also get close to doing it in nearly perfect order from the largest to smallest. But if you ask him what percentage of his sales and profits are from those key accounts, he may do a bit of hem and hawing.

We all know that the top ten are likely responsible for an outsized share of sales (and profits), but many are surprised to learn those key customers are very typically a minimum of 70% of all sales and account for nearly 85% of our profits.

So the question that begs to be asked is: Why do we not pay even closer attention to those customers than we already do?

Part of the answer lies in the fact that many of them are probably pretty easy keepers who don’t demand all that much special attention. Another is that we’re too comfortable (or complacent) believing they’ll never be tempted to wander off the reservation.

Both are mistakes. The importance they represent to the foundation of the business makes it darn clear that they deserve outsized service matching their outsized contribution.

It’s November… How’d that happen?

Winter‘s a cumin! It’s just now full-blown Fall, but the fact is we’re closing in on the last two month stretch of 2026.

Not only does that fact imply we’re running out of time to achieve that lofty budget we created last year, but it also forecasts some other less critical, but still important, nut and bold issues that deserve our serious attention.

For staters any seasonal customers who we haven’t yet closed up (and collected from) need to be addressed. That titration kit that’s been residing in the trunk probably needs to be brought in at night so we’re not wasting time thawing it out for our first call of the day.

Then there’s the matter of Tax Day. Now’s the time to gather any receipts and other records that we’ll need to get this year’s returns prepared and filed in a timely fashion. And special attention needs to be paid to any documentation that can either lead to avoiding money left on the table – or worse yet taxes being paid that should not have been.