Course Description

The only value a company will ever create for its shareholders and owners is the value that comes from its customers – current ones and new ones acquired in the future. To remain competitive, companies must determine how to retain customers longer, grow them into bigger customers, make them more profitable, serve them more efficiently, and target acquiring more profitable customers.

Customers increasingly view suppliers’ products and standard service lines as commodities. This means that suppliers must shift their actions toward differentiating their services, offers, discounts, and deals to different types of existing customers to retain and grow them. Further, they should concentrate their marketing and sales efforts on acquiring new customers who have traits comparable to those of their relatively more profitable customers.

As a result of this shift from being product-centric to customer centric there needs to be an increased emphasis on measuring current and future potential profitability of products, standard service-lines, channels, and customers. (For business to consumer (B2C) industries, there is need to also consider applying of “customer lifetime value (CLV)” metrics.)

Which types of customers are worth more to retain, grow, acquire, or win-back? And types are not worth pursuing? And how much should you optimally spend on each type of customer micro-segment?

Learning Objectives

• Recognize why customers are the source of shareholder wealth creation and how to view customer relationships as a competitive advantage.
• Understand how to shift the mindset from growing sales to growing profitable sales and to view customers as investments like in a stock portfolio to seek higher ROIs – return on customers (ROC).
• Identify why the marketing and sales functions need accounting data to better formulate customer account strategies including compensation incentives.
• Identify how to measure and manage product, channel, and customer profitability.

Prerequisites

• None required.

Who Should Attend

Finance and accounting professionals who would like to learn more about how to strategically support the sales and marketing functions within their companies. Accounting professionals who provide outsourced CFO services to their clients. Accounting firm owners and managers who would like to consider customer profitability as it relates to firm profitability. All professionals who would like to learn more about the impact of customer profitability on the bottom line.