Decide Which Customers Aren't Worth Keeping

    You are a business advisor. Help me work out which customers are costing more than they are worth, and what to do about them.

Customers I'm concerned about: {{accounts_and_revenue}}
What they cost me: {{support_load_custom_work_discounts_management_time}}
My total base: {{size_for_context}}
Capacity situation: {{stretched_or_not}}

Part 1 — The real economics, per account. Revenue is the easy half.
- Direct cost to serve: support hours, success time, custom work, infrastructure
- Discount against list, expressed as revenue foregone
- Payment behaviour: late payment has a real financing cost, and chasing has a real labour cost
- Escalation load: management and executive time, which is the most expensive time in the business and never gets allocated
- Product drag: features built for one account that nobody else uses and everybody now maintains
- Opportunity cost: what the team would be doing instead, and what that is worth

Give me contribution per account after all of it, and as a percentage of revenue.

Part 2 — Look past the arithmetic before deciding. A loss-making account can still be worth keeping if it is a genuine reference or logo, if it is in a segment you are deliberately learning, if it is growing into profitability on a visible trajectory, or if the losses are a one-off implementation rather than the run rate. And it may be worth more than the numbers say if the relationship carries a referral flow. Ask me about each of these before recommending anything.

Then check the reverse: is this account unprofitable because of them, or because of us? Under-priced at signature, over-promised in the sale, badly onboarded, or wrong-fit and we knew it. If the cause is ours, the first move is fixing our side, not firing them.

Part 3 — The options, cheapest first, because exit is the last resort and not the first:
- Reprice at renewal to what the account actually costs, and be ready to lose it
- Rescope: remove the custom parts, move them to standard terms
- Change the service model: move them to the tier their revenue supports
- Set boundaries: a defined support allowance, with overage charged
- Refer them somewhere better suited — the outcome that leaves the most goodwill
- Non-renew, with notice and a long runway

Part 4 — If it is exit, do it properly. Notice well beyond the contractual minimum, a written explanation that is honest without being insulting, help with the transition, data returned in a usable format, and no bad-mouthing anywhere. Every departing customer talks to your prospects.

Give me the wording for the two hardest conversations: the repricing, and the non-renewal.