It really was an innocent and simple question. I just wanted to get the conversation going. I said, "Tell me about your best and your worst customer."

Bill, a successful jewelry designer, quickly named his best customer (who had four names). Yes, that is what he called her: Carole Ann Berg Cohen.

She would call and say, "Bill, I am sitting with Dr. Grady, and he has not gotten his wife a new piece of jewelry in five years. He needs to rectify the problem ASAP. Can I bring him down to your showroom in an hour?" And sure enough, within an hour she was standing there with a slightly overweight, studious-looking chiropractor telling him that if he did not spend at least a thousand dollars on his wife, he was a cheap SOB.

Now that is the kind of customer loyalty every businessperson dreams of. Not only does she make referrals, she also closes the sale.
As for the customer he could live without, Bill acknowledged that it would clearly be Mrs. Zuroff. Once, when he saw her approaching his store, he quickly put up a handwritten sign on his front door: "Sorry, closed for inventory." She pounded on the bulletproof glass, still trying to get, in but he just kept on gesturing at the sign and mouthing the word "sorry."

I did not think much about Bill's comments until I was meeting Eddie, a local men's-clothing storeowner. I asked him the same opening questions, who are your best and worst customers?

Initially, he had a puzzled look on his face. In order to get him thinking, I told him the story of "four names" and Mrs. Zuroff. To my surprise, he exclaimed, "That has to be Linda Zuroff, from Zuroff Industrial Cleaners." I said I didn't know, but I was feeling slightly uncomfortable.

Without any prodding, Eddie became very animated and told me what a pain Mrs. Zuroff was. She often came to his store to buy a suit for her husband and would take an hour of his best salesman's time looking through the rack of suits and frequently asking Eddie to try them on, because he was the same size as Mr. Zuroff. Even if she ended up buying the suit, three out of four times Mr. Zuroff returned it.

"Is it the same Mrs. Zuroff?" he asked. I did not know, nor did I want to know. I was very embarrassed. All I wanted was to just tell an interesting story to break the ice, not get into complaints with a potential customer of mine.

Sure enough, it happened another time at a meeting with the local optician. Now I know that Pittsburgh is a small town, but this was unbelievable. True, I had this supposed valuable piece of information--Mrs. Zuroff was the customer from hell--but how could I use this information to my advantage?

OK, I told myself, do what you tell your customers to do. Think outside the box. Be counterintuitive. Go against the opinion on the street. Alas, all to no avail.

I took a break to watch my favorite cable television show "The Sopranos." I admired Tony Soprano's business acumen. Clients paid him an ongoing retainer (protection!) to ensure that they had no problems. I saw it as a monthly consulting fee, and he did not have to deliver any tangible service. He just promised them no trouble. And in New Jersey, having no trouble from the Soprano family was worth Tony's weight in gold for every storeowner in strip malls adjacent to the New Jersey Turnpike.

I wondered, how would Tony run my business? Then it finally hit me. I had access to a very, very valuable database: the Mrs. Zuroffs of Pittsburgh and all of her cloned counterparts.

My value proposition was simple. Businesses are always buying databases of potential customers that meet their specific demographics. I would do the opposite: I would sell them the names of all the customers that "you never want to have." If a local business owner balked and was unwilling to buy my list (which would require an ongoing monthly fee), then I would make sure the appropriate Mrs. Zuroff frequented his store and told all of her similarly difficult friends.

Then I needed to operationalize my business plan.

I did my market research and developed a list of more than 100 Mrs. Zuroffs. It was rather easy to collect the data. Business owners frequently do not want to share the names of their best customers, but they are very willing to talk about the customers they despise.

I approached my first potential client, a new, boutique shoe store in the neighborhood. I told him of the value of my unique customer database and asked if he would be interested in putting me on retainer.

He thought I was crazy and told me so. As I left, I casually mentioned that Tony Soprano was my mentor, and I suggested that it would really be in his best interest to agree to my proposal. He said, "Now I know you're crazy!"

This, I decided, would be the true test of my entrepreneurial skills. I sent a bogus letter to five Zuroffs, offering them a $25-coupon to shop in the new shoe store. The only requirement was that they act as secret shoppers and not show the coupon until they were at the checkout counter.

I watched my agents in action. Over the next week, they visited the new store. As expected, they each took a very creative approach to their assignment, typically spending two hours purchasing a pair of fancy bedroom slippers that were on sale for $23.95 Not only did they want to get away without spending a penny, they wanted the clerk to give them an actual dollar back!

The store owner started hearing complaints from his salesmen and the clerks. Not only were there phony coupons being presented, but also the customers themselves were one big pain.

The phone call came to me within a week. "Hesh, I would like to buy your services and the use of your non-customer base." I calmly agreed. Hanging up the phone, I screamed, "Thank you, Tony Soprano!" I had my first sale of my new service.

As I put my business strategies into operation, I gained critical insights about growing my business. I learned quickly that my clients would share with me the names of a new Zuroff--because they wanted to know why this specific person was not on my preferred-customer list. I apologized for the inconvenience, giving them a 25-percent discount on the following month's fee. Most important, I had a new name to add to my database and would so inform my clients, immediately, via my secured website.

I also learned that my database had a very low turnover. I guess once you are a Zuroff, you never change your approach to life and shopping. Thank God for DNA and genetics.

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