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Introducing “return on relationship” with your most valued customers
The traditional model of growing your business—by relying on employees in sales, marketing, and product development—is dying. Today’s most successful companies are taking a different approach: getting customers to market, sell, and create products for them.
In assessing client value, most companies look at the money paid for their goods and services. But in this book, Customer Strategy Group CEO Bill Lee offers a compelling new vision for growth by maximizing your “return on relationship” with select customers—those that offer rich sources of hidden wealth. A different type of ROI, this strategy of making the most of your firm’s existing relationships is a modern approach to customer relations—one that yields a distinct business advantage.
Illustrated by numerous case studies—Salesforce.com, SAS Institute, 3M, Microsoft, and others—The Hidden Wealth of Customers shows the value some customers can have by helping to market your offerings, penetrate foreign markets, leverage the demand-generating power of social media, build customer communities, improve innovation, and more. Lee explains how to effectively engage this crucial audience, which has the power to keep your strategy focused on important customer issues and increase profitability.
When done right, your best customers will prospect for you while also speeding product adoption and improving customer satisfaction and long-term loyalty.
Consider this book a blueprint for finally making the most out of your most valuable customer relationships.
1 The Coming Customer Revolution 1
Transforming Customers into Advocates, Influences, and Contributors
2 Return on Relationship 27
The Key to Turning Customer Engagement into Organic Growth
3 The Most Powerful Sales Force 45
Your Customers Are More Credible to a Buyer Than You Are
4 The New Marketing Machine 63
How Customer Advocates Can Drive Marketing Strategy
5 Harnessing the Internet 91
How Customers Can Turn the Web from Threat into Opportunity for You
6 Building Customer Communities in a Networked World 111
How Customers and Companies Are Doing Together What They Can't Do Alone
7 Customer-Enhanced Strategy 139
How C-Level Customers Can Create Rapid Growth
8 The Most Innovative Designers 161
How to Get Meaningful Customer Input to Make Dramatic Improvements in New Product Development
Appendix: Are You Creating Robust Organic Growth? A Diagnostic 187
Notes 199
Index 203
Acknowledgments 219
About the Author 221
Overview
Introducing “return on relationship” with your most valued customers
The traditional model of growing your business—by relying on employees in sales, marketing, and product development—is dying. Today’s most successful companies are taking a different approach: getting customers to market, sell, and create products for them.
In assessing client value, most companies look at the money paid for their goods and services. But in this book, Customer...