Every Single Name in Your Rolodex Represents Potential Income
In today’s business relationships, the balance of power has shifted to the customer. This is not news. But in Everyone Is a Customer, the "customer" has been redefined.
Everyone with whom a business interacts—internally and externally—is a customer. However, companies need to effectively allocate resources to those relationships that create the greatest strategic value in order to improve performance and increase profits.
Traditional customer relationship management (CRM) and partner relationship management (PRM) strategies and technologies recognize that organizations need to interact with customers and alliance partners in a more meaningful way. But they do not take into account relationship currencies. According to award-winning entrepreneurs Jeffrey Shuman and Janice Twombly, collaboration is the key to success in today’s networked economy. Successful collaboration, say Shuman and Twombly, comes through effectively trading in relationship currencies.
Built on the revolutionary concepts from their last book, Collaborative Communities, Shuman and Twombly outline methods every company and businessperson can use to develop and measure win-win collaborative relationships.
Managers, leaders, and business owners will learn how to:
*Redefine every business relationship as a "customer" relationship.
*Value, measure, and manage relationship currencies.
*Realize value through both cash and non-cash currencies.
*Work toward Purposeful Collaboration, that is, the allocation of resources toward the most valuable relationships.
*Determine a company’s value from a new perspective by putting a tangible value on an intangible, such as customer relationships.
In the age of collaborative business, you must think from the perspective that everyone is a customer, that there is quantifiable and significant value in non-cash relationship currencies, and that the intricacies of all forms of business relationships can be objectively measured and managed. By thinking about business from these new perspectives, you can accomplish your goals and achieve success.
About the Authors
Jeffrey Shuman, Ph.D., and Janice Twombly, CPA, are founders of The Rhythm of Business, Inc., a firm that helps businesspeople and organizations measure and manage the value in their business relationships for strategic benefit. Shuman is also professor and director of entrepreneurial studies at Bentley College, Waltham, Massachusetts, and in 1999 received an Ernst & Young New England Entrepreneur Of The Year Award. David Rottenberg is an editor at Shuman and Twombly’s company and has written for several regional and national publications. Together, they are the authors of Collaborative Communities: Partnering for Profit in the Networked Economy.
Advance Praise for Everyone Is a Customer:
"Many companies are realizing that the relentless forces driving collaborative business—customer-driven markets, smarter applications of business technology, and a relentless drive for innovation—are too powerful to ignore, and they’re trying to jump in, any way they can. Shuman and Twombly’s book can give those companies—as well as those that have yet to take the plunge—not only the broad perspectives they’ll need to make it work but also a set of tactical and tangible tools that’ll help them measure their progress against their objectives."
—Bob Evans, Editor-in-Chief, InformationWeek, and Senior Vice President, CMP Media
"Just when I was beginning to think ‘business book’ was an oxymoron, Everyone Is a Customer lands on my desk. This is the real thing: a substantive, useful guide to rethinking the true value of business relationships. Chapter 3—exploring how to monetize all of your company's relationships—is worth the price of admission by itself."
—George Gendron, Editor-in-Chief, Inc.Magazine
"As the web of the extended enterprise increases in complexity, managers and entrepreneurs need more than good instinct to conduct business relationships profitably. Everyone Is a Customer provides a smart, practical framework and tools that we can use today for measuring and extracting fair value from the relationships we rely on to meet our business goals."
—Gregory K. Ericksen, Global Director, Entrepreneur Of The Year, Ernst & Young
"In an era of uncertainty, economic turmoil, and global unrest, the greatest asset of any business or businessperson is the relationship. Rich in ideas, tactics, and actions, Everyone Is a Customer delivers a clear and crisp framework for understanding and leveraging every business relationship to its fullest. Jan and Jeff have become masters of effectively communicating the essentials of business success and choreographing the road map to business opportunity."
—Thomas M. Koulopoulos, President, Delphi Group, and Author of X-economy
Jeffrey Shuman, Ph.D., and Janice Twombly are founders of
The Rhythm of Business, a knowledge firm that helps create awareness, understanding, and adoption of collaborative business. Shuman is also professor and director of entrepreneurial studies at
Bentley College, Waltham, Massachusetts, and in 1999 received an
Ernst & Young New England Entrepreneur of the Year Award.
Janice Twombly and Jeffrey Shuman, Ph.D., are founders of
The Rhythm of Business, a knowledge firm that helps create awareness, understanding, and adoption of collaborative business.
David Rottenberg is an editor at Shuman and Twombly's company, and has written for several regional and national publications.
