Angel Customers and Demon Customers: Discover Which is Which and Turbo-Charge Your Stock

Product Details

How businesses can thrive by learning which customers are creating the most profit-and which are losing them money.

One of the oldest myths in business is that every customer is a valuable customer. Even in the age of high-tech data collection, many businesses don't realize that some of their customers are deeply unprofitable, and that simply doing business with them is costing them money. In many places, it's typical that the top 20 percent of customers are generating almost all the profit while the bottom 20 percent are actually destroying value. Managers are missing tremendous opportunities if they are not aware which of their customers are truly profitable and which are not.

According to Larry Selden and Geoff Colvin, there is a way to fix this problem: manage your business not as a collection of products and services but as a customer portfolio. Selden and Colvin show readers how to analyze customer data to understand how you can get the most out of your most critical customer segments. The authors reveal how some companies (such as Best Buy and Fidelity Investments) have already moved in this direction, and what customer-centric strategies are likely to become widespread in the coming years.

For corporate leaders, middle managers, or small business owners, this book offers a breakthrough plan to delight their best customers and drive shareowner value.

Customer Reviews ::

Outstanding Piece of Work - Cap -
This book is a highly relevant must read for anyone serious about customer-centricity. The model used has the potential to drive economic benefits that far outpace traditional marketing, CRM, and customer satisfaction focused programs.

It should, however, be read along with some other good material on CDI and Customer Experience Management (CEM) like Collin Shaw's books on CEM [...] - I have no connection to them.

I've talked with a few companies and consultants who have attempted to implement customer profitability management without the underlying CDI and the programs failed - even in smaller markets like Europe. It places a little too much faith in just demanding data from IT on the premise that millions have been invested in systems so the data must be there. That is certainly not always the case. A good CDI strategy is critical to this program. But the focus of this book is the financial model and it should be read for what it is.

The other section of material that could be more developed is the Value-Exchange methodology. Intermixing operational customer segmentation (not the kind done in direct marketing programs) with the profitability deciles would seem to be the kind of thing that is needed to mature the strategy and place relevant value propositions where they belong in the CEM/marketing mix.

But alas, customer centricity is far too broad and complex of a topic to knock out in one book. This book is excellent and makes a much-needed contribution to a field that is sometimes more enamored with attempts at operant conditioning (a.k.a. CRM) than common sense management. I bought out the entire stock of this book from a store and continue to give copies give copies away to this day.

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