Erika Jones, CFO, CCTAProfit First Professionals · Certified Fractional CFO and Profit First Professional

Focus on the heart of your organization

29 May 2025 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:29

In this coaching‑style presentation, the speaker revisits a previously shared 80/20 matrix that links client profitability to the organization’s product mix. Starting with the top 20 (best) clients, she categorises the company’s offerings into three profitability tiers: loss‑making (negative income), break‑even/middle‑mix (low or neutral profit), and high‑margin (best products). She explains that when top clients purchase loss‑making services, a direct intervention is required – the firm must communicate the unsustainability of those purchases and guide customers toward more profitable alternatives. For the middle‑mix tier, the strategy is educational: help clients understand the value of higher‑margin offerings and move them upward. The highest tier – best products bought by best clients – represents the “heart” of the organization, where the firm should concentrate its energy and nurture those relationships. The talk emphasizes the need for hard conversations, customer education, and strategic focus on aligning top clients with the most profitable offerings.

Chapters

A couple weeks ago, I shared with you a matrix, the 8020 rule. How it applies to not just your clients but also your offering. And you got to understand where the heart is. We're going to go back to it. Got a new graphic, I'm starting from scratch here. And we're just going to look at the client side, your best clients. This is your top 20 clients. These are the ones we want to evaluate and we talked about the offering. Well, these clients can buy any mix of offerings they could buy here, which is your low. Actually not even low. It's your loss offerings. These are the things where you lose money. So it's negative income or negative profitability. When your best customers are buying this, there's an intervention. You gotta tell your customers, we love working with you because you're a great customer. What you're buying is not sustainable for us. We have other offerings and see if you can move them up. This is a real challenge because great customers buying things that you're losing money on may not be a great customer after all. The next scenario, I call this the middle mix. And the middle mix is your offerings here that generate some profitability. Sometimes they're kind of break even. These are. Okay, we have to elevate them up through education. And the highest level is your best products are being bought by your best customers. That's where the money is. This again is the heart of your organization and where you need to love upon these customers. So this one is a real hard conversation with them or yourself. They this one is education up to better offerings. And here is the heart of your organization. We want to concentrate our energy.