Your top 10 customers, and the one to reach out to this week

Hi there,

Most service business owners cannot name their top 10 customers by total spend.

They can name three. Maybe five. The ones who came in last week, the loud regulars, the easy faces. But sort the actual list, by actual dollars, across the last 18 months? Most have not done it. Not this year. Maybe not ever.

This is the customer audit most owners avoid. Not because it is hard. Because it surfaces a question they have been ducking: which past clients have I let drift away, and which one should I be talking to right now?

The signal

Your top 10 customers, sorted by total spend across the last 18 months. Not "valued clients." Not "people I see often." Dollars in, ranked. Some names on that list have not been back in 90 days. That gap is the signal.

The tool

This lives in whatever you use to track who pays you. Booker, Square, Etsy, QuickBooks, your CRM, even your bank statement export if that is what you have. The report you need is usually called "Customer Sales Summary" or "Top Customers by Revenue." Export to a spreadsheet so you can sort and filter.

The action

Pick one customer in your top 10 who has not bought from you in 60+ days. Reach out this week. Not a pitch. A check-in, two sentences, referencing something specific about their last visit. Total time: 15 minutes to pull the report, 5 minutes to write the message.

30% of your past customers will buy again if you ask them right. They are not strangers. You already earned them once.

In two weeks: the meeting nobody on your team wants to have, and why running it once a month protects your margin.

Anne-Cécile

P.S. Reply and tell me which of your top 10 you are reaching out to first. I read every one and write back.