Most Comfortable, Productive Phase
Business: “Decline” stage, eroding market rewards, increased competition, customer retention
- when the market is nearly saturated or when the value of a new substitute overshadows the initial offering
- Customers quit shopping on price, quality, and producer efficiency.
- A capitalizer’s best skills no longer make market winners. There is plenty of market to still serve.
- generate substantial cash profits that become available for reinvestment in new business units whose growth can and should exceed the current business unit’s decline.
- retaining existing customers is the key strategic principle
- Customer retention is accomplished through a combination of expert assistance, sympathetic customer care, ongoing education of the product/service’s values, and of course just enough value at the right price.
Project: Sustaining and Maintenance
- Keep the lights on
- Ongoing CI for specific customer issues
- Incremental improvements, enhancements
Position Types
- expert assistance
- sympathetic customer care
- ongoing education of the product/service’s values
- provide just enough value at the right price.
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Works Best
- Downstream with an established business as an Expert, Empathizer, and Educator focused on continued customer success
- Business unit reaches its peak and begins a long and slow stage. Marketplace rewards erode as demand falls and remaining competition intensifies due to standardization, saturation, and better performing alternatives. The business unit focus shifts from customer acquisition to customer retention.
- Knowledge experts and appreciative customer service are key volume drivers for sustained business.
- as educators
- as empathizers
- as experts
- energized by being helpful
- achieve a great deal with very little
- invested
- personal 1:1 helpful attention has significant impact.
Trouble Spots
- Extenders are not as effective at other business unit stages.
- Interest in closure, continuity, and completeness over deadlines and quotas means builders and capitalizers will out-perform the extender at building and capitalizing.
- A source of tension exists with capitalizers who become frustrated by the extender’s apparent disinterest in efficient delivery.
Theme & Focus
- “I’m listening. How can I help?”
- Relationship stewardship
- customer satisfaction and retention
loyalty - meeting unique needs of valued customers
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Character
- Stewards who devote themselves to cultivating high-touch relationships with their customers, fostering loyalty and ongoing satisfaction through
- understanding and meeting their unique needs
- Enjoys work environments where they can apply expert knowledge, solve problems of customers, engage in training
- energized by customer satisfaction challenges
- personally rewarded from both the ‘thank you’ they get from the customer
- personally rewarded from the knowledge that their efforts are allowing the firm to build a new business somewhere else
- enjoy the variety that comes with each customer’s unique problem
- passionate about reusing the knowledge they already have about products, markets, and customers
- lives for the satisfaction of making a positive difference in the day of someone else
- prioritize providing their special brand of care over maximizing company profits and personal income
Strength(s)
- Create lasting value with contribution
- will show tenacity and creative problem solving skills in pursuit of a solution
- helpful
- trustworthy
- sociable
- structured
- Focused on customer satisfaction
Limits
- take their time finding solutions
- alter profitable standards to suit a single customer
Seen by others as:
- social, friendly
- expert
- non-compliant
- slow
