How do you know if you are dealing with the right customers? Your response might well be “Does it matter?” since any customer who buys from you must be a good customer. To an extent this is true. However, if we take this a little further and ask if you are dealing with the most profitable customers or with tomorrow’s “winners”, you might reconsider your reply. The challenge for most companies is to balance the interaction between the efficiency and effectiveness of their sales force. If cost and resources were not an issue the most effective way to manage the customer universe would be to deal face-to-face with every customer. Unfortunately cost and resources are two critical issues so for most businesses this is not a viable option. At the other end of the scale, the most efficient (least cost) approach would be not to have a sales force at all and handle all business through a low-cost option such as telesales. This, however, would almost certainly lead to inferior customer relationships and missed opportunities which can best be exploited through direct contact. The solution is to identify the channels of trade mix which can best deliver the company objectives, be it volume sales, market share increase or bottom line profit. Within each chosen channel, which customers offer the most lucrative and profitable long-term business potential to the company? Investing your scarce human and trade spend resources with tomorrow’s “winners” will help to ensure that the efficiency and effectiveness of the sales effort is optimized.