Managing Customers Profitably

As a global business manager for one of the world's largest professional information networks, my single biggest mission is building relationships with senior executives that will endure and profit both sides for 10 years or more. The brand is their endorsement of our life time value. Lynette Ryals provides thought-provoking tools, ideas and real-world cases of how to manage the trade offs between the financial relational and strategic value of one's customers. This is a compelling read for anyone who wants to implement change around the true value of your most important business asset - your customer base. -Nandini Basuthakur, Executive Director, Corporate Executive Board Company (UK) Ltd. Lynette Ryals is a great researcher, teacher, writer and practising manager. She is also an outstanding marketer. Please read this book, which is written in a very engaging style. You will learn so much that is valuable and actionable that it will change your career for the better.-Emeritus Professor Malcolm McDonald, Chairman of six companies, former Marketing Director of Canada Dry Managing Customers Profitably combines excellent research, practical models and deep insight into the topic. This invaluable guide is clearly written, comprehensive in coverage and should be on the desk of every manager charged with improving customer profitability. -Professor Adrian Payne, Professor of Marketing Australian School of Business, University of New South Wales An excellent book that will not only provide great guidance to those starting out in sales or marketing but will allow even the most experienced professionals to back up their intuition and judgment with justifiable and objective facts.-Richard Vincent, OEM Business Operations Manager, HP Storage Platforms The issues involved in attracting and retaining profitable customers are amongst the top challenges faced by the Chief Executives of value chain businesses. This book provides a logical approach to understanding and tackling these challenges, and will prove invaluable to senior managers not only in marketing but also in the other key business areas that drive customer value.-Professor Alan Waller, OBE, Vice President, Supply Chain Innovation, Solving Efeso and Vice President Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport International The book highlights and offers great suggestions on how organisations can better position its resources across its customer base. The concept of understanding customer lifetime value was of great interest to me and strongly supports the argument that not all large customers are necessarily strategic ones. Furthermore the importance of selecting the right channel to market to maximise returns and the importance of understanding the true costs of retaining customers longer term are areas I plan to explore further now. A great book and though-provoking for anyone in a commercial management role today.-Kevin Gani, marketing & Sales Effectiveness Manager - Europe, Electrocomponents plc