O cliente não é a última etapa, é o ponto de partida (parte II)

Continuado daqui.
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"Tactic 1: Choose the Right Customer
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Any firm that looks to sell products or services to the market needs to treat its customers as assets. Therefore, the first strides a firm needs to make in order to reach its end goal of financial success is to find the customers who can bring the most value back to the organization. (Moi ici: I rest my case...) In the past, marketing literature has stated that it should be the goal of the firm to retain its customers at all costs. The idea behind this retention strategy is that the cost of retaining customers is, on average, significantly less than the cost of acquiring customers, and by retaining even up to an additional 5% of the customer base, a firm can increase its overall profit ability by 100%. While it is true that the cost of retaining
customers is often less than the cost of acquiring customers, this research does not take into account the fact that not all customers are profitable customers. There are many customers out there who do contribute significant value to the firm but cost even more to retain. These customers who cost the firm more than they give back are not worth chasing after. (Moi ici: E quantos clientes tem assim? É capaz de os identificar? Lembra-se de Jonathan Byrnes?) However, it is important to note that the value of a customer to a firm should not be measured in profits based on revenue minus cost of goods sold and marketing costs alone. Customers can also add value to the firm by helping to attract other customers through positive word of mouth, effectively lowering the cost of acquiring some new customers or retaining some current customers.  And, allowing these customers who do add value to the company through indirect means to defect from the firm or disadopt the product or services being offered, especially early on in the life cycle of a product, can generate significant losses in future profits for the firm.
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 it is more important to choose customers who bring the most value to the firm, who are not necessarily all the high-revenue customers. What is important to realize about these high-value customers is that they can be found among just about any of the various segmentations of customer groups (e.g., there can be highvalue customers who spend both a high amount and a low amount of revenue with the store since many of the apparel items offered have varying margins depending on the type and label). Therefore, it is important for retail stores to identify the drivers of high-value customers, not just high revenue customers, when they are making efforts to choose whom they will chase after. This does not mean denying business to any customer who walks in; it just means that they make sure to give the proper incentives to those customers who are most likely to be profitable. (Moi ici: Estou sempre a dizer isto às empresas)
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Kumar tem um livro "Managing Customers for Profit" onde discute uma metodologia para identificar os clientes que interessam. Interrogo-me, para uma PME portuguesa, a partir do momento em que os gestores tomam consciência da diferença entre os clientes... será que o conseguem fazer sem grandes complicações, sem grandes fórmulas?