January 16, 2005

Stop Chasing Market Share. Grow Customer Share™

🚀 Audacious Move™ of the Week

Stop Chasing Market Share. Grow Customer Share™

Bold Decisions Create Extraordinary Businesses.

I hope it helps you create yours.

🎯 Market Share Has You Looking in the Wrong Direction

Businesses love market share.

They measure it. Report it. Obsess over it.

I never did.

Because Market Share puts your attention on the market and your competitors.

How much do they have?

How much do we have?

How can we take some from them?

Wrong obsession.

Markets don’t buy anything. Customers do.

That’s why I use Customer Share™.

💰Forget the Market. Follow the Customer’s Money.

Customer Share™ isn’t simply selling more stuff to existing customers.

It’s the percentage of a targeted customer’s relevant spend—within the business domain defined by your Strategic Game Plan™—that you earn.

Suppose one of your targeted customers spends $1 million a year on data communications.

They spend $500,000 with you.

Your Customer Share™ is 50%.

Forget what your competitors’ overall market share is.

Your growth opportunity is staring you in the face.

There’s another $500,000 being spent somewhere else.

Strategic advantage and growth comes from serving chosen customers and maximizing share of their relevant spend rather than flogging products to the masses.

🔥Innovate Your Way™ to More

Now ask:

How do we move our Customer Share™ from 50% to 60%… 70%… 80%?

And here’s where it gets interesting.

You shouldn’t know the answer.

If all you need to do is sell more of the same stuff, you’re not innovating.

Set a Customer Share™ target that creates an “I don’t know how” gap.

Then Innovate Your Way™ across it.

Discover what the customer Craves™.

Find problems you’re not solving.

Discover opportunities you’re missing.

Create new, relevant value they’re prepared to reward.

That’s innovation with a purpose.

Not brainstorming.

Not innovation theatre.

It’s innovation directed at earning more of the customer’s relevant spend.

🚀Customer Share™ Changes the Growth Conversation

Market Share encourages you to look sideways at competitors.

Customer Share™ forces you to look deeply at customers.

Market Share asks:
“How much of the market do we own?”

Customer Share™ asks:
“How much of our chosen customer’s relevant spend do we earn?”

And then comes the money question:
“How do we Innovate Our Way™ to more?”

That’s where I’d put my energy.

Stop chasing markets.

Start growing Customer Share™.

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Extraordinary careers aren’t built by ordinary decisions. They’re built one Audacious Move™ at a time.

Now go make yours.

Cheers,
Roy

• Posted 1.16.05 at 06:00 am by Roy Osing
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