Latest News on Category: customer strategy

The question of pricing is once central to the discussion of forecasting and planning for profitability.  Old wisdom says lowering prices will increase our customer base and more than offset the lower margins on our new prices, giving us a new competitive advantage over our competition…

But is this assumption correct in fast-moving, turbulent times?

In today’s video (see the end of this blog entry), I will answer that question by giving you the exact tools you need to assess how changing prices will impact your business’s true profitability.

 As you watch the video, you will discover

• The 4 strategies every CEO must understand clearly and focus on in order to succeed in today’s fast-moving and complex world.
• How lack of clarity and focus can create a downward spiral in your business and erode your confidence as a decision maker
• The steps to identify whether your company lacks sufficient strategic focus.
• Why updating your “mental models” is the key to your future success.
• Whether you should raise or lower your prices to improve your business profitability

Whether you should raise or lower your prices is directly attributed to your company’s strategic competitive position in your market. 

In this video, I introduce three critical What-if Predictive Scenario Calculators to give you the strategic focus you need to determine the answer to this crucial question of whether to raise or lower prices.

First I introduce the “Should Prices be Raised or Lowered Calculator” which clearly calculates the number of new customers necessary to offset a price decrease and the number of customers who can be sacrificed in a price increase to keep gross margin dollars consistent. 

Second, I introduce the “Customer Contribution Calculator” which provides you clarity on which customers you should be focusing on growing, and which are sucking your profits. 

Third, I introduce a calculator to actually calculate your value proposition in your market, and assess your real strategic competitive position.

To ensure you have the clarity, focus, and execution to make the right strategic decisions for you and your customers during these fast-moving times, I invite you to watch this video. 

You will learn more about which decisions to make based on your assessments when you join my e-learning by doing programs.  You can schedule an appointment for a consultation and discussion of which program is right for your business when you contact us using the form below.

How to measure the impact of customer retention and satisfaction on your business so you can maximize profitable and sustainable wealth.

The vast majority of senior executives and corporate leaders are making a dire error when measuring the happiness of their customers.  They focus on worthless customer surveys and on new client acquisition to measure their ability to serve customer needs, rather than focusing on the most important measure of customer satisfaction: Customer Retention.

Improving your customer retention rate is quite simply the fastest and easiest way to create a massive positive impact on your profitability.  Customer retention gives you two critical pieces of data for analyzing your business:

1. It tells you precisely how good you are at understanding what customers need and delivering customer value. 
2. It provides you the input necessary to calculate the average customer lifetime of your customer, which in turn, allows you to calculate net new customer growth, lost revenue from customer attrition, and how much new revenue you can create by focusing on customer retention improvement.

In this video, I demonstrate and explain these concepts more fully...and provide you with step by step instruction for using my Customer Retention Rate What-if Strategic Growth Calculator™.    When you use the calculator, you will discover the three-step system for analyzing your ability to create and deliver the value your customer base is looking for.

Understanding your customer retention rate, average lifetime customer value, and the levers you can pull to create more revenue from existing customers can secure your business growth and profitability during these fast moving, non-linear times.

Consider the difference between Blackberry and Apple. 

Blackberry was a powerhouse of the early 2000’s when they came out with a handheld device with a QWERTY keyboard and easy access to email.  However, as smarter and smarter phones became the norm, Blackberry focused on maintaining its leadership with corporate clients, rather than risky innovation.

By focusing on the wrong questions about customer satisfaction (that of the corporations and not the users), Blackberry did not notice the lifetime of a customer was declining.  The company simply did not realize how many customers were falling off...and how much more quickly they were moving toward smartphones.  Even the corporate clients, which were Blackberry’s bread and butter, began to buy iPhone as employees demanded the latest technology.   As iPhones introduced apps that allowed employees to access any email service, fast search, and even windows programs, corporations began to change their buying habits as well.

Because of the focus of Blackberry on maintaining the status quo, they did not realize they were leaking customers at a very high rate...as Apple focused on customer wants for sleek design, lightweight phones, color and touch screens and apps. 

As Blackberry shows us, managers and CEOs must first focus on client retention.  You must know how well you are serving your current clients before you focus on new customer acquisition.  Most corporations have this wrong…

The corporations focusing on client service and satisfaction, on pivoting quickly to meet client demand, and on providing clients the greatest experience dominate markets in fast-moving, non-linear times. 

In an era of social sharing, ease of consumer reviews, and fast-paced technological advances, customer happiness is even more profitable than ever before.  According to a 2016 Nielsen survey, 82% of Americans cite referrals as the #1 criteria when choosing a product or service to purchase. 

Customer Retention Rate is now more urgently important than ever. 

I invite you to access the Customer Retention Rate calculator here, watch the video as a guide on how to use the calculator and then use your own data to assess your company’s results.  

Once you complete the exercise with your team, I invite you to schedule a call with me to discuss your results and gain further insight as to how my advisory services can help you drastically improve your customer retention and profitability in these turbulent times.

(http://www.business2community.com/marketing/numbers-dont-lie-2016-nielsen-study-revealed-referrals-01477256#RrGBc8tzwfVrgW00.97) - link to study