This is such an underrated topic in service businesses. Everyone tracks revenue per customer but almost nobody tracks revenue per mile or per hour of actual route time, which is where the real profit picture lives. A customer twenty minutes off your core route isn't just costing you drive time either, it's costing you the stop you could've fit in that same window. Letting go of a four year client is genuinely hard, that loyalty means something, but the math doesn't lie. Sounds like tightening the radius was the right call even if it stung short term.
100%. I do my math now based on how many yards we can do in an hour. I have a new client with a massive property and I think it's going to take us at least 45+ minutes a week... so I'm having the hard conversation of either raising her per visit price or dropping her completely because we can do at least 2-3 yards in that same amount of time.
