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 presentation, the speaker revisits the 80/20 matrix to help organizations focus on the "heart" of their business—its most valuable customers and products. The talk walks through a client‑side analysis, starting with the top 20 clients and mapping the mix of offerings they purchase. Three offering categories are defined: loss‑making offerings (negative profitability), a middle mix of break‑even or modestly profitable offerings, and the highest‑value offerings that generate strong profit when bought by the best customers. For each category, the speaker outlines specific actions: confronting top clients who buy loss‑making products and encouraging a shift to sustainable offerings; educating clients about moving from the middle mix toward higher‑value products; and concentrating energy and resources on the best customers purchasing the best products. The overall message is that by using the 80/20 rule to identify and nurture the most profitable client‑product relationships, organizations can align resources with the true heart of the organization.

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 got to 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. 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.