The Hidden Wealth of Customers: Realizing the Untapped Value of your Most Important Asset

Citation

Conejo, F. (2013), "The Hidden Wealth of Customers: Realizing the Untapped Value of your Most Important Asset", Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 30 No. 5, pp. 463-464. https://doi.org/10.1108/JCM-05-2013-0570

Since the beginnings of marketing nearly a century ago, there has always been talk of a customer orientation. By the Post‐World War II Era this notion became formalized through the marketing concept and later even touted as a marketing revolution. Since then much has been written on the importance of being customer‐centric, the last couple of decades focusing on different aspects of customer relationship management (CRM).

The Hidden Wealth of Customers, by corporate consultant Bill Lee, suggests that conventional CRM is not enough. Focusing so single‐mindedly on sales, basically striving to get people to buy more, short‐changes organizational CRM efforts. Given today's highly competitive markets and nearly perfect informational availability, a more organic growth model, beyond merely creating demand, needs to be pursued. Customers, both current and potential, should no longer be seen as just buyers. They should instead be included as active participants within the firm's different processes. It is through this joint participation, with customers as co‐creators of value, that firms can become more efficient, competitive and profitable.

As author Lee mentions, (p. 9):

“Working to create ’promoters’ doesn't come close to capturing what the companies profiled in this book are doing. It's only the price of admission. Such companies are bringing customers into their sales, marketing and product development processes to get better product development success rates and higher returns, a lower cost of qualified lead generation, improved sales close rates, and above all, to create rapid awareness, interest, and the desire to buy in marketplaces saturated with information.

This is no magic bullet. It takes hard work and, in particular, significant attention and involvement by senior management while you reinvent the customer relationship. But the rewards, as we'll see, are worth it.

The Hidden Wealth of Customers consists of eight chapters. Its first one, The Coming Customer Revolution, introduces the overall notion of involving customers more actively within different company processes. Chapter 2, Return on Relationship, describes the role of customer advocates, influencers and contributors, and explains how to quantify their respective inputs. Chapter 3, The Most Powerful Sales Force, indicates how to structure customer‐based referral programs that actually do contribute to the bottom line. Chapter 4, The New Marketing Machine, stresses how the company needs to create marketing gravity and how customers can be engaged to help the firm create this attraction. Chapter 5, Harnessing the Internet, describes how web‐based customer initiatives, and more recently social media, should be used by the firm along its different processes. Chapter 6, Building Customer Communities in a Networked World, emphasizes the need of developing shared values, goals and customer belonging. Chapter 7, Customer‐Enhanced Strategy, suggests thinking big, being ambitious, with firms also targeting senior corporate executives as potential customers/collaborators. Chapter 8, The Most Innovative Designers, stresses the importance of customer R&D involvement in order to generate true innovation. The book ends with an Appendix, in which a diagnostic questionnaire for customer‐driven organic growth is provided, a section on Notes, an Index, Acknowledgements and Author information.

The Hidden Wealth of Customers is written in a personal style, as if the author were speaking directly to the reader. The writing is also quite colloquial, pushing concepts like Rock‐Star Customers, among others. This informality keeps the train of thought light and fluid. As for the writing structure, chapters are all subdivided into short sections. The latter are sprinkled with bullet points, sidebars and graphs, and then summed‐up in key takeaway points. All this further lightens the reading.

In terms of content, The Hidden Wealth of Customers draws mostly from select case studies and company examples to illustrate how extended customer involvement might be successfully implemented. However, the book is sparse on theory, references, empirical support and thorough discussion. Being more persuasive than factual, the book's claims thus need to be taken somewhat at face value, its occasional overstatements with a grain of salt.

As far as key audiences, academics are unlikely to find The Hidden Wealth of Customers ground breaking. Most of its ideas have been discussed for some time within different streams of literature, treated in a more concise, objective, and rigorous manner. Because of this, the book is also unlikely to be used as complementary reading within sales, marketing, or management courses, where students instead refer to the original sources.

That said, The Hidden Wealth of Customers is still worth looking into. It does bring up some interesting considerations in regards to extending the conventional CRM concept and the future role that customers might come to play within organizations. Not only does it provide good food‐for‐thought, but it integrates all its ideas into a coherent proposition and even provides step‐by‐step guidance in regards to implementation.

And precisely because of its light and practical nature The Hidden Wealth of Customers should appeal to executives, mostly corporate types, who would like to refresh or extend their organization's CRM efforts. Being short, light and readable, the book should make a perfect in‐flight companion.