What is Top 20 and why is it important?
Top 20 is a concept taught by Strategic Coach but is applicable for any business leader. Your Top 20 group represents the 20 people that will generate the greatest revenue for you and your business over the next 90 days (note, these are NOT leads!). They can be key clients/ customers, big vendors or suppliers, referral partners, and especially some of your key team members. These are people you need to stay in front of with purpose and gratitude. Remember, people do business with those they know, like and trust!
- Log into your QB and run a report of Sales by Customer- set it for whatever span of time makes the most sense for your business. If you can project out 90 days, this is best.
- Identify the biggest spenders historically on that list. Add them to your Top 20.
- Think about or run a report on where the majority of your referrals come from. Add them to the list.
- Which of your team members manage those highest value clients? Add them to the list.
- Which of your team members are always trying to upsell clients into larger packages? Add them to the list.
- Which vendors represent a significant contribution to your supply chain, or to the delivery of your product or service? Add them to the list.
You'll likely wind up with a list of more than 20 names. You'll need to pare that down so that you have a strong list of 20 that you feel great about. You can weight them by value, or just strategically select.
To be clear, we are not talking "leads" here. Leads are not actively closed business and they are not generating revenue. They belong in a separate category which still needs to be nurtured, but not as part of this Top 20 campaign. We will talk about touching this group (Coach terminology is "Farm Club) in a later article. We've built this entire process into an Asana template that your team can use to run your own Top 20 campaign. That's available for download here: Top 20 Asana Template.
We then take the list of 20 and strategically break out the touch points across the quarter. This works out to less than 2 per week. You can do that, especially with great help! Assign your support partner the responsibility of ensuring you touch those 2 people per week. Your support partner should be managing at least 80% of this process for you. Your 20% contribution will include creation of the Top 20 list, helping think through key touches and any direct interactions with the Top 20. For an easy reference guide explaining how your support partner can execute this program on your behalf, check out our article 12 Ways Your Support Team Can Execute An Awesome Top 20 KIT Strategy.
Now that you have your list of 20, you'll want to determine a healthy, respectful touchpoint schedule. Our goal here is to focus on relationship building of the best quality. Our work should be useful, effective and meaningful. With Top 20, it's about making the people that support your business feel valued and connected to you; show them you care about them and value their support of your business. It's about cultivating a meaningful relationship with them and keeping in touch with efficiency and purpose.
For a list of creative, meaningful ways to stay in front of your top 20, check out 20 Meaningful Ways To Touch Your Top 20.
This blogger graduated from Goldman Sachs’ 10,000 Small Businesses program. Goldman Sachs is a partner of the What Is Working: Small Businesses section.