Customer Intimacy: Pick Your Partners, Shape Your Culture, Win Together - Hardcover

Wiersema, Fred

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0002558211 ISBN 13: 9780002558211

Publisher: HarperCollins Business, 1997

Synopsis

Fred Wiersema, leading business strategist and bestselling author of The Discipline of Market Leaders, shows how companies can profit from establishing closer, more co-operative customer relationships.

Why are Levi Strauss, British Airways and Xerox so successful, with record profits and sky-high reputations? Because they are making the most of practices Wiersema calls ‘customer intimate’.

Customer intimate companies earn their customers’ confidence and co-operation to further productivity. Suppliers and customers work together as if they were two different aspects of the same organization, jointly pursuing mutual success.

Wiersema describes how customer intimacy works, how to implement it, and the pitfalls to look out for.

One in three market-leading companies makes the most of these practices. This is a vital book for any manager considering the next step beyond reengineering, quality thinking and lean management.

Companies described include: Black & Decker, Boeing, British Airways, Chrysler, CIGNA, Colgate-Palmolive, Fisher-Price, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Levi Strauss, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble, Xerox, Young & Rubicam

About this title

About the Author

Fred Wiersema is a leading business strategist and consultant to high-performance companies. He is co-author with Michael Treacy of the best-selling The Discipline of Market Leaders. He is a senior vice president of CSC Index, the international management consulting firm known for its pioneering approaches to business strategy, reengineering and large-scale change. He has been featured in Fortune, Business Week and various leading European business publications.

From the Back Cover

AMONG THE CUSTOMER-INTIMATE COMPANIES DESCRIBED:

'
Bank of Ireland, Black & Decker, Boeing, British Airways, Cable & Wireless, Chrysler, CIGNA, Colgate-Palmolive, Fisher-Price, Ford, GE Plastics, Saturn (General Motors), Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Levi Strauss, Microsoft, NCR, Procter & and Gamble, Samsung, SAP, Xerox, Young & Rubicam.
'

What makes British Airways, Xerox and Levi Strauss such successful companies, with record profits and sky-high reputations? What special skills do these companies have that others do not? What new techniques do they use to win customers and capture market share?

One in three of today's market-leading companies is making the most of practices describes by best-selling author Fred Wiersema as 'customer intimate'.

Customer-intimate companies earn their customers' confidence and make use it to find new ways to further productivity and create greater levels of success. As suppliers and customers learn to work together, the line of distinction between them becomes blurred, and they begin to operate as if they were two different aspects of the same organisation, jointly, pursuing mutual success.

Richly illustrated with examples from some of the best-known and most successful customer-intimate businesses – companies large and small, domestic and international, from consumer retailers to business-to-business suppliers of all kinds of goods and services – Fred Wiersema describes how to:
• Design an operating model and develop the skills to execute it.
• Initiate the shift to customer intimacy, and address the possible pitfalls.
• Learn to choose and engage customers and provide complete solutions to their needs.
• Shape your culture and create new measurement systems and management structures to support it.
• Recognize the red flags that signal an apparently appealing prospect that could mean trouble.

'Customer intimacy' is essential reading for anyone considering the next step beyond quality thinking, lean management and business reenginering – and for anyone who wants their company to thrive in today's fiercely competitive environment.

"An outstanding contribution… customer intimacy can so easily be confused with customer friendliness and good customer service practices. But it is much, much more."
PHILIP KOTLER S. C. JOHNSON & SON, DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR OF INTERNATIONAL MARKETING, J. L. KELLOGG GRADUATE SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT, 'Northwestern University'.

"Customer Intimacy takes understanding of customer requirements to a new level. Exciting and challenging, it represents a huge payoff for those that get it right."
DONALD W. HUDLER PRESIDENT, 'Saturn Corporation (General Motors)'.

"I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for the next competitive edge. Customer intimacy is the essence of our selling strategy. By partnering with our customers as their trusted advisor, we build a win-win relationship and lock the competition out."
MANUEL DIAZ VICE PRESIDENT AND GENERAL MANAGER, 'Hewlett-Packard Company'.

"This is a book to be thought about… not just read. But be warned, it's an easy read that will stimulate a lot of hard thinking."
PETER GEORGESCU CHAIRMAN AND CEO, 'Young and Rubicam Inc.'

Edition details

• Publisher: HarperCollins Business
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0002558211
• ISBN 13: 9780002558211
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 240