Tuesday, October 27, 2026

Vet and allied health practices rarely have a clinical problem. Here is how to find the real constraint, keep patients returning and build a 90-day growth plan.

You've got the customer who emails at 9pm, haggles on every invoice, and takes three follow-ups to pay. And you've got the one who orders on time, pays on time, and never once asks for a discount. You treat them almost exactly the same — same response time, same effort, same place on your list. If you can't say in thirty seconds which of your customers actually carries the business, you're not alone, and it's costing you more than you think.

The Enemy Is Treating Every Customer the Same

Fairness feels like good business. It isn't the same thing as good strategy. I worked with a client who had 123 customers on the books. When we actually ran the numbers, eight of them — just 6.5% of the customer list — had delivered $266,240 of a total $630,220 in revenue, better than four dollars in every ten. The other 115 customers, treated with exactly the same time, discounts and priority as those eight, were splitting the rest. Nobody had planned it that way. It had simply never been measured.

The A-B-C-D Grading System

This runs on the same logic Vilfredo Pareto noticed in income distribution over a century ago: a small share of inputs usually drives most of the result. Applied to your customer list, it looks like this.

  • Pull last year's revenue by customer. Not estimates — the actual numbers from your accounting system, ranked top to bottom.
  • Grade A, B, C, D. A customers: your top revenue band, easy to work with, who you'd clone if you could. B: solid and reliable, but not top-tier value. C: break-even once you count the time they cost you. D: actively drain you, slow to pay, high-maintenance, or both.
  • Flip your effort, not your prices. A customers get first call, fastest turnaround and the occasional extra mile. D customers get a polite price increase, a firmer process, or in some cases a referral elsewhere.

"Kevin is a master of his craft... He is a powerhouse presenter and facilitator who brings an explosive blend of energy and expertise to every room he steps into. Participants don't just sit and listen; they leave buzzing with breakthrough ideas and simplified, highly effective growth strategies. Most importantly, Kevin leaves people profoundly inspired, fully equipped, and fiercely motivated to drive their businesses forward. He is the standard-setter!"

— Darilyn Kane, Coaching and Advisory Lead, The Icehouse

Why Most Owners Never Run the Grading

Here's the real obstacle: grading your customers means admitting a few of them probably shouldn't stay customers at all, and that's an uncomfortable conversation to have with yourself, let alone with them. Most owners know this exercise exists. Almost none run it, because without someone holding them to it, I'll do it next quarter always wins. That's the part coaching actually solves, not the maths, which takes an afternoon, but the follow-through on what the maths tells you to do next.

Key Takeaways

  • Pull your actual revenue-by-customer numbers before you trust your gut on who matters most.
  • Grade every customer A through D on value and ease, not on how long you've known them.
  • Protect your A customers' time first, they are usually a small slice of the list carrying an outsized share of revenue.
  • Address your D customers directly, with a price change, a firmer process, or a graceful exit.

This isn't for you if you'd rather keep every customer happy than build a profitable business. It's for you if you're ready to find out, honestly, which eight customers are actually carrying yours.

If you've never graded your customer list, that's usually the first number we run together.

Monday, September 21, 2026

Winning deals teaches you what worked once. Losing deals, reviewed properly, reveals exactly where your sales process breaks — and keeps breaking until someone looks.

Monday, September 21, 2026

Big systems feel like progress but rarely fix productivity. The dozen small daily frictions nobody's bothered to remove are usually the real cost.

Monday, September 21, 2026

The cheapest coaching option is often the most expensive one once you count the year it fails to fix. Here's what a coaching engagement should actually deliver for the price.

Monday, September 21, 2026

The fastest way to grow isn't always a bigger ad budget — it's borrowing the trust a complementary business has already earned with your exact customer.

Monday, September 21, 2026

Dollar sales are up 0.8% but real unit demand fell 1.7% in the latest US retail data. If your revenue growth is just a price story, here's how to find out — and fix it.

Monday, September 21, 2026

Most business plans are fiction the moment they're printed. Here's the 3-step Resource Alignment Audit that reveals the strategy you're actually running — and how to close the gap before it costs you another quarter.

Monday, September 21, 2026

Most small business marketing budgets chase the customers who already love you. Category Entry Point Mapping shows why that caps your growth — and where the real customers are hiding.

Monday, September 21, 2026

More leads won't fix a slow sales pipeline. Learn the sales velocity formula SME owners rarely calculate — and the one lever that moves revenue faster than any lead-gen campaign.

Monday, September 21, 2026

"It's faster if I do it myself" is quietly capping your business's growth. Learn the $200-an-Hour Test to see what your delegation debt is really costing you.

Monday, September 21, 2026

Anyone can get certified as a business coach in a weekend. Almost nobody has actually built what they're advising you to build. Here's the Scar Tissue Test to tell the difference.

Monday, September 21, 2026

Winning deals and building compounding growth are not the same thing. Learn the Compounding Growth Audit to see if your business is actually building an asset — or starting from zero every quarter.

Monday, September 21, 2026

16% of grocery households now have someone using a GLP-1 medication — and they're buying less across your category, not switching brands. Here's the three-step Appetite Audit for your range before Q4.

Monday, September 21, 2026

Most SME owners compete by trying to be better than everyone else — and that's exactly why they're stuck. Here's the 3-step framework to become the only option instead.

Monday, September 21, 2026

You paid for a website and a rebrand — but your Google Business Profile is what's actually deciding who gets the call. Here's how to fix it this week.

Monday, September 21, 2026

The order you say things in a sales call matters more than the words. Here's the pricing sequence mistake quietly costing SME owners their margin.