Your Best Customers Are Killing Your Business

Your Customers Are Killing Your Business: The Profit Parasite Pandemic

Customer profitability analysis reveals a shocking truth: your bottom 20% of customers aren't just dead weight—they're corporate cancer consuming 150% of your total profits while you worship at the altar of "customer-centricity."

While you're sending thank-you cards to every customer with a pulse, these profit parasites are literally sucking more money out of your business than your entire company makes. Harvard research proves that the most profitable 20% of customers generate between 150% and 300% of total profits. The brutal reality? Your smallest customers are ordering custom configurations that cost more in engineering hours than their entire order value.

The Whale Curve Phenomenon

This "whale curve" phenomenon means most businesses unknowingly subsidize unprofitable customers through excessive service costs, custom configurations, and resource drain—destroying overall profitability. Unprofitable customers demand excessive customization, frequent service calls, special pricing, and management attention that far exceeds their revenue contribution.

The pattern is always the same: businesses hemorrhaging profits to serve customers who should be their competitor's problem. You've been brainwashed into believing all revenue is good revenue, but you're not running a business—you're funding a charity with a corporate logo.

What You'll Learn in This Episode

Todd Hagopian, CEO of Stagnation Assassins, reveals how to conduct a Customer Profitability Audit that exposes every profit parasite in your portfolio. You'll discover how to implement Strategic Brutality to transform or terminate toxic customer relationships, and create Value-Based Customer Criteria that protect your margins like bouncers at an exclusive club.

The Fear Is Worse Than Reality

Won't firing customers damage your reputation? Actually, the opposite happens. When you focus on serving fewer customers exceptionally well, you transform from a desperate generalist into a selective specialist. Premium providers don't serve everyone—they serve the right ones.

One company sent their bottom 20% a 50% price increase letter. Half left and profits went UP. The other half stayed and became profitable. When you stop subsidizing parasites, you create capacity to better serve profitable customers.

Calculate the REAL cost of serving each customer—not just product cost, but every service call, custom request, delayed payment, and executive escalation. Companies often discover their "loyal" small customers cost more to serve than the revenue they generate.

Start immediately with a Customer Profitability Audit on your bottom 10 customers. This week. The longer you wait, the more money these vampires drain from your business.

Visit StagnationAssassins.com to access tools for conducting your Customer Profitability Audit and join the movement to Declare WAR on Stagnation.

About The Podcaster

Todd Hagopian has led five corporate transformations across Fortune 500 business units, small businesses and startups, generating $2B in shareholder value across his corporate roles.  He is the author of The Unfair Advantage (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FV6QMWBX) and he is the leading authority on Corporate Stagnation Transformation (https://toddhagopian.com), earning recognition from Manufacturing Insights Magazine and Manufacturing Marvels.   He has been Featured over 30 times on Forbes.com along with articles/segments on Fox Business, OAN, Washington Post, NPR and many other outlets, his transformative strategies reach over 100,000 social media followers every day.

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