In these days of failing businesses and reduced profitability, the idea of picking and choosing your customers may seem a strange one. However, customer profiling is an essential component of management training and personal development, and can be one of the best exercises your business undertakes.
The best time to do this is, of course, when business is booming so that the thought of turning down work does not seem quite as painful.

Perhaps one of the simplest examples of customer profiling would be carried out, instinctively, by a small business. Say that you are a children’s entertainer or a disc jockey. You work alone, and are happy with the control over the business you currently have. You do not wish to have the headaches involved in expansion. However, bookings are coming in, and you can only be in one place at a time.

Normally, you might be willing to negotiate with anyone who wants to haggle as you would prefer to be making some money rather than none. However, if you consider that these customers are often harder to please and expect more for the reduced rate, you might prefer to turn them down, especially as those jobs are less profitable. In fact the way such businesses usually regulate the amount of work they do is to take the opportunity, in times of high demand, to increase their prices.