We don’t have unprofitable customers, just unhappy accidents

Thank you, I really appreciate your summary as I couldn't get past the first couple paragraphs.

In my experience, the worst customers are when you are not dealing with the customer directly, and have some sort of consulting or global services consulting company in the way. Most customers are not particularly difficult if you can interface with them directly, but the middleman has their own set of incentives that don't necessarily align with either yours or the end customer's. Throw in the extra communication overhead and room for error when playing telephone like that, and the typical communication styles of such VARs (daily status calls, expectation of instant support at ungodly hours, reluctance to put anything in writing or email, bald-faced dishonesty at times...), and it can be downright soul-sucking.

I do embedded consulting (not supply chain/distribution stuff at all), and I could very readily places my customers into the various boxes. As a technical person who accidentally found himself running a business, articles like this are awesome for helping to shape my thinking.

It could use a little more context. I also was confused at first and the graphs seem to me to want to make the topic look more technical then it really is. Nevertheless, it's a very interesting perspective into a field I'm not familiar with.

It's not just you. I really couldn't follow it either.

They are whadrant charts not graphs. While the article is written for people in the wholesaling industry it really says “if you just think of a customer in terms of what they mean to you you may be missing most of the value”

Here's the most important part:

>Believe it or not, most sane buyers want their top vendors in a product category to be reasonably profitable...only a fool puts the core of their business on an unsustainable supplier.

The trick is becoming that "top" vendor. Developing and aiming for that relationship is the job of sales. The term "incomplete sale" is mentioned/introduced, signifying sales that get the order but do not lead to long-term profitability.