📘 Where Value Lives Companion Resources
Reading progress: Chapter 6 of 25
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Next: Chapter 7 → The Economics of Attention
Welcome to the companion page for Chapter 6 of Where Value Lives.
This chapter introduces the Customer Attention Portfolio.
If attention is scarce, and if strategic attention must be selective, then we need a practical way to decide where that attention should go.
That is what the Customer Attention Portfolio is designed to do.
It helps us think about customers not simply by size, revenue or current activity, but by the relationship between current value and future strategic potential.
Some customers are valuable today and likely to remain strategically important. Some are small today but may become important in the future. Some are useful but should be served efficiently. Some consume attention without creating enough value to justify it.
The portfolio helps us see the difference.
That matters because the wrong customers can quietly consume the organisation’s best attention.
And the right customers can multiply it.
Move beyond theory and put Chapter 6 into practice with this structured Executive Implementation Guide.
Use it to evaluate strategic customers, compare current value with future potential, identify attention mismatches and create a practical customer attention plan.
Publication: WVL-EIG-06-01 Version: 1.0 Format: PDF
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On this page, you’ll find resources to help you apply the Customer Attention Portfolio to your own customer base.
Use this page to reflect on:
The portfolio is not a moral ranking of customers.
It is a discipline for allocating scarce organisational attention.
In the Chapter 6 summary video, Fred explains how the Customer Attention Portfolio helps organisations separate current value from future strategic potential.
The video explores the four broad categories of customer attention:
The point is not to put customers in boxes and forget about them.
The point is to improve judgement.
A portfolio is useful only if it helps the organisation make better choices about attention.
The Chapter 6 Companion Toolkit is designed to help you map your own customer portfolio and decide where strategic attention should be invested.
Suggested tools and exercises for this chapter include:
The purpose of the toolkit is to help you make the portfolio practical.
Not theoretical.
Not decorative.
Not another colourful matrix that gets admired briefly and then buried in a shared drive.
A working tool for better account decisions.
The Customer Attention Portfolio exists because organisations often allocate attention badly.
Not because people are foolish.
Usually because they are busy, pressured, political, optimistic, loyal, distracted or trying to keep everyone happy.
Unfortunately, trying to keep everyone happy is not the same as strategy.
Some customers are large today, but have limited future potential. Some are difficult today, but strategically important tomorrow. Some are loud, but not valuable. Some are quiet, but deeply important. Some are familiar, but stagnant. Some are small, but point toward the future.
If we only look at current revenue, we may overinvest in yesterday’s importance.
If we only look at future potential, we may drift into fantasy.
If we only listen to noise, we will let irritation write the strategy.
The portfolio helps us step back.
It asks two practical questions:
What is this customer worth to us now?
What could this customer become if we invested attention wisely?
Those are not simple questions. They require judgement. They require honesty. They require evidence. They require leaders and account managers to talk about customers in a more disciplined way.
That is the real value of the portfolio.
It creates a better conversation.
For example, an account in Protect and Grow deserves serious attention. These customers are already valuable and have significant future potential. They need executive sponsorship, cross-functional effort, account planning, innovation thinking and careful relationship development.
An account in Develop Carefully may not yet be large, but could become strategically important. These accounts need thoughtful investment, but not blind enthusiasm. The question is whether attention can help unlock future value.
An account in Serve Efficiently matters, but may not justify deep strategic investment. These customers should receive excellent, reliable service without consuming disproportionate leadership energy.
An account in Review Honestly may be consuming more attention than it deserves. That does not mean treating the customer badly. It means asking whether the relationship, as currently managed, makes strategic sense.
The portfolio is not perfect.
No portfolio tool is.
Customers move. Markets change. People change. Strategic potential can rise or fall. A customer who looks modest today may become important after a merger, leadership change or market shift. A large customer may become less attractive if behaviour, profitability or fit deteriorates.
That is why the portfolio should not be used once and then preserved like a museum exhibit.
It should be reviewed.
Discussed.
Challenged.
Updated.
The best use of the Customer Attention Portfolio is not to label accounts permanently. It is to help the organisation think more clearly about where attention should go now.
Because attention is scarce.
And strategy begins when we choose where to spend it.
The right customers multiply attention. The wrong customers consume it.
Choose ten important customers and map them against two questions:
Then place each customer into one of four groups:
Then ask:
Complete this sentence:
Our biggest attention mismatch is…
That answer may tell you more than the matrix itself.
This chapter comes from watching organisations struggle with customer prioritisation in practice.
Most businesses know they should focus attention. Far fewer have a reliable way of deciding where that focus should go.
The thinking in this chapter connects to:
Useful themes to explore further include:
The central lesson is this:
Do not let customer noise, history or habit decide where your best attention goes.
Thank you for reading Chapter 6 of Where Value Lives.
This chapter matters because it gives practical shape to the attention argument.
If attention is scarce, then attention needs a strategy.
The Customer Attention Portfolio is not the whole answer, but it is a useful starting point. It helps leaders and account teams ask which customers should receive deeper investment, which should be served efficiently, which should be developed carefully and which need to be reviewed honestly.
That clarity matters.
Because Strategic Account Management is not about treating every account as strategic.
It is about knowing which accounts truly are.
If you would like access to the wider Where Value Lives resource library, including practical tools, worksheets, prompts, updates and future companion material, you can join the reader community here.
You do not need to sign up again on every chapter page.
Once you are part of the community, you will be able to access the growing collection of book resources as they are released.
And the portfolio helps decide where it should go.
If you would like access to the wider Where Value Lives resource library, including practical tools, worksheets, prompts, updates and future companion material, you can join the reader community below.