The Best Time to Plant a Tree was 30 years ago, the Second Best Time is Now
Here is my backstory to why I'm taking up writing
My first attempt at writing anything substantial was a fantasy-novel that I wrote during my teenage years, produced on one of those old manual typewriters where the arms would get jammed occasionally if you accidentally pressed down more than one letter at the time. I recall sharing the draft with my trusted inner circle at the time and how people encouraged me to keep writing, but the book draft ended up collecting dust on a shelf instead.
The second time I explored writing was when online blogging started emerging in the mid-90’s, although life was about to get really busy back then and I eventually put things on hold while I navigated through the university years.
Two master’s degrees, four and a half years and a pile of student debt later, I had graduated and concluded that the immediate priority would need to be to find a graduate job and get my career underway. Everything else would have to wait.
Fast-forward the story and after many years in the corporate world, the entrepreneurial itch always stuck with me and last year I took a personal giant leap when I started posting publicly on LinkedIn for the first time and started sharing content about customer-focussed leadership.
One of the main reasons which has now led me to Substack is that LinkedIn is not great for consuming long-form content, and I believe this type of format will bring out a new and different angle to the content creation which fits well with my personal style.
Discovering Customer Value Management
A defining moment in my early career that was to set the course for many years to come was when I started working in an area called Customer Value Management (CVM). This business approach is somewhat of a mix of art and science, aimed at ensuring that existing customers get the most value out of the company’s products and services.
This may sound like a pretty obvious thing to do, but as the story unfolds this is an easy thing to say and a difficult thing to do. Customer Value is a straight-forward concept, but as a multi-disciplinary field it can be quite complex to grasp different business situations as there are often many moving variables to consider.
A common misunderstanding when it comes to Customer Value is that it is primarily a business method to maximise the business value generated by clients (which might create a train of thought to raise prices and cut back on servicing costs). This approach can yield immediate results, but it’s somewhat short-sighted and quite a blunt tool that is unlikely to be sustainable or effective strategy in the long run.
Instead, a better business philosophy is to seek to maximise the value for the customer and try to create a win-win situation. Once you understand that value management of existing customers is not a zero-sum game, a range of new, and complementary opportunities to create value for your business will open up.
This concept is beautifully described in the quote below:
“Customer will create most value for you at the point where he thinks you’re creating most value for him” - Don Peppers
What’s next?
As I have quite a bit of time on my hands at the moment, this seems like an ideal moment to take up my long-lost aspiration of writing and it feels like a logical and natural step to combine it my current field of expertise: Customer Value.
I’ll be writing occasional posts to begin with, focussing on how to scale Customer Value. You can expect to hear about my personal experience, thoughts and viewpoints on topics such as Customer Engagement, Customer Strategy, Customer Experience and Customer Value Management.
If you enjoy reading my posts or want to ask any questions, do let me know as I would love to hear from you and it motivates me to keep going! Feel to also share my posts with others who might be interested in the topics I write about.
All posts will be free and public to start with, and if would like to support my work further there is also an option to pledge a future paid subscription.
I will endeavour to make my content interesting and useful for you. Sign up below to subscribe and you will start receiving new posts directly to your email inbox.
If you got this far, thanks so much for reading my first Substack post and I hope to see you back here soon.
Until next time,
Jens