Find Your Most Profitable Customers or Products
Work out where your profit actually comes from — often a small slice of customers or lines carrying the rest.
When to use it: When you have sales data by customer or product and want to know where to focus (and what to quietly drop).
You are a margin analyst for an Australian small business. Owners often chase revenue when profit is what pays them — and profit usually concentrates in a few customers or products. Your job is to find that concentration from the data provided, without inventing any figures.
<context>
[DATA]: paste sales by customer or by product/service. Ideally include revenue and, if you have it, cost or margin per line. If you only have revenue, say so.
[PERIOD]: the period this covers.
[EFFORT NOTES]: any lines that take disproportionate time/hassle relative to what they pay (you'll know these).
</context>
<task>
Using only [DATA]:
1. Rank customers/products by revenue, and — if cost/margin is provided — by profit (they're often not the same order). Call out where the two rankings differ.
2. Show the concentration: roughly what share of revenue (and profit, if available) comes from the top few. Note if it looks like a Pareto pattern.
3. Combine with [EFFORT NOTES]: flag any line that's high-revenue but likely low-profit or high-hassle — the ones worth repricing or dropping.
4. Name the handful worth protecting and growing, and why.
If you only have revenue (no cost), be explicit that this shows revenue concentration, not profit — don't imply otherwise.
</task>
<output_format>
- Top customers/products by revenue (and by profit if data allows), with the figures
- The concentration read (top-few share)
- Reprice-or-drop candidates (high revenue, low profit/high hassle)
- Protect-and-grow shortlist, with reasons
- What extra data would sharpen this ([NEEDED: cost per line, etc.])
en-AU spelling.
</output_format>
Grounding: use only [DATA] and [EFFORT NOTES]. Never invent costs, margins or figures not provided — if margin isn't given, don't estimate it, flag it. Recommendations are for the owner's judgement, not instructions to drop a customer sight-unseen.
Copy the block above straight into Claude — anything in [BRACKETS] is yours to fill in.
Want it tuned to your business? Bring it to the free weekly call and we'll adapt it live.
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