Finding Low hanging fruit

I was sitting in the garden looking at my lemon tree. I noticed that the lemons were visible in the lower half of the tree. I then realized the significant link between these lemons and many businesses out there.

I work with many businesses as a mentor, and coach and everybody seems to be chasing the next bright shiny object. There is nothing inherently wrong with that as sometimes we do want to get that big contract or win the big client.

But often these same businesspeople forget about the low hanging fruit. What is attractive about the low hanging fruit? The attraction is that they’re easy to pick, they are generally ripe for the picking and easily accessible.

We can look at this amazing natural phenomenon and apply some ideas to many aspects of business. If we start with the most common – customers. We would classify our customers using a variety of methods into A, B and C clients.

Who are the A clients? Often it those that require a lot of work. They potentially take up a lot of our time, but equally so they are good to deal with and they generate a significant portion of our revenue.

The traditional C client is the one who kicks the tires a lot, wastes a lot of time and does not add significantly to the revenue or the profit of the business.

The low hanging fruit is different. That in my mind, would be a B list client. These are the clients that potentially add value to the business. They do not take up a whole lot of time that and could in the future become A clients. But for now, they are easily accessible, easy to get to and add value to the business. We often forget about these low hanging fruit clients.

Every time a client of mine complains about not enough A clients and too many C clients I am going to send them the picture of the lemon tree and remind them to get the low hanging fruit.

Rael Bricker
Team development, Leadership and Sales Specialist

If you would like to know more about Rael and his Strategy and Risk Management workshops, please visit this link.