Customers make your business successful. Without them you don’t have a business. Have you ever thought about how many customers you need to make your business thrive? The answer may surprise you and it may change your mind about how to attract and keep your best customers.

Let’s look at two examples. Barbara and Jim each have their own business. Barbara sells beauty products from her retail store. Jim is a life coach. Each of them wants to make at least $60,000 personal income from their business this year.

Barbara has a number of expenses, sometimes referred to as overhead, that come from running her store. She estimates $2,500 per month or $30,000 per year to cover rent, staffing, advertising, and everything else needed to keep her store running. Barbara purchases her products from several suppliers. On average, for every dollar spent by her customer, Barbara gets 50 cents. The other 50 cents goes to the company that supplied the products.

For Barbara to reach her goal of $60,000 personal income, she needs at least $90,000 ($60,000 plus $30,000) income from her business. The business must generate twice that much in sales, or $180,000. Barbara divides this by 12 and sets her sales goal at $15,000 per month or about $3,750 per week.

Barbara knows that her average sale is $25, so she needs to have 150 sales each week to reach her sales goal of $3,750. She multiplies this by 4 (weeks per month) and then by 12 (months per year) to find that she needs to make 7,200 sales per year. If every sale came from a new customer, Barbara would have to find and attract 7,200 people to her store. She thinks about a mass advertising campaign.

Now Barbara thinks more about her customers. Her typical customer makes one purchase per month or 12 purchases per year. Using this information, Barbara calculates that she really needs 600 (7200 divided by 12) customers. She starts thinking about ways to find and keep at least this many satisfied customers.

Jim’s business is very different. He works from a home office and budgets $500 per month, or $6,000 per year for his overhead expenses. So Jim’s business needs to generate $66,000 in sales for him to reach his goal of $60,000 personal income.

Jim’s clients typically work with him for six months to achieve their goals. They generally spend $500 per month during that time, so Jim’s average client spends $3,000 during the year. Jim divides $66,000 by $3,000 and realizes he only needs 22 clients to generate the income he wants. He focuses on how he will find and attract those people.

Barbara and Jim have identical goals for personal income, but their businesses are very different. Working through the numbers and focusing on how many customers are needed helps them select the best methods for finding and attracting the people who will make them successful.

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