A conversation came up today about a person who actively turned away potential customers who he felt he wouldn’t be able to earn much money on with a business that essentially dealt with providing people with drinking water. While its main form of business is having people go to its shop and fill up on water, they also advertised a service where they would deliver to people as well. Specifically, small businesses.
The interesting thing was if it was a small business that only has say about three people it appeared that the person would immediately reject them as it didn’t seem like it would be worth his effort. Tricky situation I thought as in one way you can argue that having to say deliver this one order of water that only makes you say $2 is not worth your time. Then again the other way of thinking about it is that you are essentially throwing away a potentially good customer base as imagine if that business all of a sudden started to grow at a fast pace.
I don’t know about you, but I would think most people wouldn’t even do business with them after if they grew bigger in one of those “So now you want to be nice to us huh” type of mentality. I think in a situation like that instead of just bluntly turning people away because you don’t think they would be profitable it’s probably better to give people things like a clear minimum purchase amount before you are willing to fulfill certain orders. Like in those cases at least people will most likely understand that you can’t afford to process certain orders without it costing you too much money. Probably a better way to maintain that relationship with people too to do future business with you.