Who are these people and why are they giving you all that money?

A number of years ago, I was attending an executive committee meeting. The president of the company was there. So was the CFO, COO and VPs of sales and purchasing. In my hand I had a list of names I had gathered from a report I had run. I asked the group, “have you guys heard of any of these people?”

I read the first name and looked around. No signs of recognition. Then the second and third. Nothing. I kept reading names until someone got impatient and interrupted me, asking me to get to the point.

The point was that I was reading a list of the company’s best customers, people who had purchased many tens of thousands of dollar’s worth of goods and services from us. One of the people in the top ten (an OCD sufferer perhaps) had visited one of our stores to make a purchase over 60 separate times over 18 months or so. (This is truly remarkable. We were running a specialty consumer electronics store, not a 7-11.)

And none of the leaders of the company (including me) knew these people by name.

Pity.

Less than 3% of our customers 

provided 26% of our sales. 

Conversely, 73% of our customers 

provided less than 20% of sales.

A little more research revealed just how important these folks were to the bottom line. For example, less than three percent of our customers were responsible for twenty-six percent of our sales. Conversely, seventy-three percent of our other customers provided less than twenty percent of sales. (The remaining folks were between those two extremes.)

During this period, most of our advertising budget was invested equally among all of our customers. So the crass perspective is that the ROI was extraordinary with our best customers. One could also make the case that our best customers were also the most loyal, so we’d have to do something really bad to have them switch to a competitor.

Well, with the stakes so high, and competition so much more prevalent today, I would advise you to do the extreme opposite of taking these folks for granted. I would recommend making every effort to give them every reason to love you. Like these folks do.

Pagliacci Pizza: My call really is 

important to them.

I love Pagliacci Pizza in Seattle. They make a really good pie. Not the best pie I’ve ever had (that was in Florence), but a really good pie. But that’s not the reason I love them. I love them because when I call up, the phone is answered immediately. If the lines are full, I hear a recording of an extremely pleasant woman’s voice. Instead of a hollow and clichéd “your call is important to us.” She says, “As one of our best customers, you know we get slammed sometimes and that we’ll be with you in a second or two.” And always, always within a few seconds, a live person picks up the call. “Is this the Lee residence?” they always ask. They always ask if we would like to hear about the specials. They always ask if we would like salad, gelato or soft drinks. They always confirm the order. They always deliver within the promised thirty to forty minutes. My call really is important to them.

What they haven’t always done is charge me for my pizza. Every once in a while, their regular customers are given their order free of charge. (Maybe only once, but so what?) It's just a “thank you” for being a regular customer. Which I will remain forever. (In fact, because I like them so much, even if they someday screwed up an order or delivered late, I’d forgive them with hardly a thought.) 

We tell all our friends. 

Pagliacci does other endearing stuff. They send out an oversize newsletter that features big pictures of their employees. I read it. Their pizza boxes are printed with scenes from the neighborhoods they serve. Pagliacci is part of the very fabric of the city.

There are other businesses in town that could consider me “a regular.” But they do nothing out of the ordinary in acknowledgement of my out-of-the-ordinary patronage. I suppose I continue to buy from them because they have a convenient location, or because of habit. But such a relationship is tenuous. And that may mean that someone else could come along and fairly easily claim my business.

I wonder if they know my name?

Would you rather Twitter or have your eyes eaten by ants?

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd’s answer to the question posed above was very clear during a recent interview with Twitter founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams. Said Dowd, “I would rather be tied up to stakes in the Kalahari Desert, have honey poured over me and red ants eat out my eyes than open a Twitter account.”

I’m a baby boomer, just a couple years younger than Dowd. But I’m of an ilk who rages at the dying of the light by mounting a daily battle to stay hip and happening. (Since starting this piece, I’ve listened to tunes by Gnarls Barkley and Lavender Diamond–eat that Old People.) Also, since I live in the present, I have waded into “social media” such as LinkedIn, Facebook and–god help me–Twitter.

…but they most definitely do not “get” Twitter

I have lots of Baby Boomer friends. They know I’ve always listened to a wide variety of music and accept that in the same way they would accept any other harmless hobby. In fact, they sometimes seem to approve of it–definitely a step up from the flat-line acceptance of other developments of maturity such as hair loss and weight gain. So they “get” the music thing, but they most definitely do not “get” Twitter.

With extremely rare exceptions, when I mention to anyone born before 1970 that I have a Twitter account, I get the same reaction: a pause, an involuntary facial expression reflecting surprise and disgust and then a grunted one-word verbal response: “Why?”

They then continue: “Why do I need to know every time someone (insert one or more, and feel free to make up your own): “feeds their cat; walks their dog; takes a leak; gets the aisle seat; has a hot flash; has a cold; is enjoying the sunshine or hating the rain; is listening to the newest Dylan album or the oldest; making chicken stock or shopping for socks; etc., etc., etc., ad nauseum." Heavy on the nauseum.

Yes! Sign me up so I can instantly hear the latest 

pearls of wisdom from Ashton Kutcher.

Then they invariably launch into a rant about the profligate time-suckage of nearly all things Internet-related that have already infested and attached themselves. “Right Bruce. E-mail’s not enough–I really should spend more time watching that You Tube video of the dowdy Scottish woman singing on Britain’s Got Talent. And did I forward that IQ Quiz? How many squares did you see? I’ve checked my Netflix queue only three times today. Have you seen my new smart phone? Now I can have it all, all the time! Yes! Sign me up so I can instantly hear the latest pearls of wisdom from Ashton Kutcher. I’m always dying of thirst and love drinking from the fire hose!”

I greatly enjoy spirited debate, but only when I think there’s a least a soupçon of a chance I might sway someone’s opinion. There’s no use arguing with the Twitter Intolerant.

Besides, it’s not like I’m some True Believer. My jury-of-one is still in deliberation, and I’m definitely not alone. Headlines within the past few days have had fun with variations of “Twitter losing its Glitter” or “Twitter Quitters.” They’re harping on the evidence that Twitter appears to lose around 60% of new users within thirty days.

Now, there are few trends I don’t at least consider bucking, but I regrettably find myself empathizing with the “Twitter Turncoats.” (Ha, ha. Thought of that one myself. How droll.) I was first drawn to Twitter while attempting to follow The New Rules of Marketing and PR by Robert Scoble. I interpreted the promise as one more (extremely fast-growing) channel to get the word out to potential clients about the benefits of hiring my company. I can’t seem to get out of the blocks, however, due to a problem I think is encountered by many of the 60%: They aren’t celebrities. We all hear about CNN and the aforementioned Mr. Kutcher racing to the goal of a million Twitter “followers.” The White House successfully started an account recently and everyone knows Oprah finally got on board. So famous! So insightful! Apparently a lot of people wanted yet another method of hearing about the latest weight loss program or hot LA club.

…Twitter is perhaps best viewed as just another 

technological teat on the flank of the Star-Making Machine.

None of the folks I follow on my Twitter account is a first-tier celebrity. I have my free-thinking rabble-rousers such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, a coterie of conservative talk-show hosts (for more on that, see my blog article), master magician Penn Jillette and my friends Ian Lurie and Steve Lawson. They’re all really interesting people who tend to say really interesting things, but there are only fourteen of them. (I don’t know what that says about me–that I must find most people uninteresting? But I prefer to believe that many interesting people don’t have Twitter accounts.)

More pathetic is the number of followers I can claim: thirteen. And there lies the crux of the problem for me and (I speculate) a lot of others who–unlike the outright Twitter-haters–are open to the idea of Twitter, but disillusioned when the reality sinks in. The reality that Twitter is perhaps best viewed as just another technological teat on the flank of the Star-Making Machine. Albeit, a Tweet Teat. (There I go again! I tell ya, I’m on fire here.)

So, while Britney may have (according to last count) 1, 284,837 subscribers eagerly awaiting her latest missive (3:20 PM Apr 23rd: “Britney and her sons’ nanny, Lourdes, planted these flowers in the courtyard of Britney’s house on Tuesday.”), I bet most folks are like me, with enough followers that you don’t feel like the last kid picked for the team, but not so many that they wouldn’t comfortably fit in my living room. (Can I get anyone another beer?) And when you think about it that way, it’s hard not to wonder if Twitter is essential–really worth the time you put into it. Or whether that time might be better spent doing something else, like feeding ants.