In senior executive circles, the idea that True Customer Intimacy is a business model transformation initiative is often greeted with knowing smiles and nods, but little understanding of what’s truly required. More often than not, the CEO expresses great interest in theCustomer Intimacy model but then wants to implement it ...

During the first stage of the Customer Intimacy Journey it is important to create and deliver solutions that have a visible impact with your clients.   As you know, terms like “solutions” and “customer intimacy” are overused in the management consulting industry, and I believe often mean too little.  In this blog, ...

What puts the Customer Intimacy journey at risk? Under investment is the answer.  It will require: money, time, effort, attention, adjustment (things never work as planned), and most of all perseverance.   Something to always keep in mind – think about the transformation as pushing something through a brick wall – if ...

Anything worth doing is, by definition, challenging and requires fortitude. How do you keep the organization focused and maintain the momentum?   Let’s keep in mind that companies have difficulty focusing for long periods of time and (like children) want immediate gratification. Therefore you and those who are like minded must ...

We work with many new practices that include: people from our clients’ legacy businesses; consultants with vertical expertise that are recent hires; and other new hires that might sell solutions.  While they each have been successful in their own careers and think they know how to build customer intimacy, in ...

As we mentioned earlier there will be natural forces within the company that will work against its success – normal, but they can be destructive, as we see in many public cases of organizational transformation attempts. Internecine warfare is a common reaction when you set about changing your business model. It’s ...

The Customer Intimacy journey requires focus for an extended period of time, and even when companies take the long view, living through the natural disappointments of this size of business model transformation can discourage the best organizations.  Thus, the importance of gaining a shared view of the business cannot be overstated. There ...

The challenge for any significant change initiative is maintaining motivation and focus throughout the effort. Most change initiatives fail because of this very issue. Both individuals and corporations suffer from this phenomenon – personal improvement (like weight loss) is difficult because the change in habit must be maintained for a long ...