📘 Where Value Lives Companion Resources
Reading progress: Chapter 7 of 25
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Next: Chapter 8 → The Politics of Attention
Welcome to the companion page for Chapter 7 of Where Value Lives.
This chapter looks at the economics of attention.
Once we accept that attention is scarce, we have to accept something else:
attention has a cost.
Every hour of senior leadership time, technical expertise, account management effort, service problem-solving or innovation focus invested in one customer cannot be invested somewhere else.
That makes attention an economic asset.
Not a vague human nicety.
Not a soft relationship ingredient.
An asset.
And like any asset, it can be invested well, invested badly, wasted, protected, multiplied or quietly drained by the wrong commitments.
This chapter is about understanding the return on attention.
On this page, you’ll find resources to help you think about attention as an economic resource in Strategic Account Management.
Use this page to reflect on:
The question is not simply whether an account is valuable.
The question is whether the attention invested in that account creates enough mutual value to justify the investment.
In the Chapter 7 summary video, Fred explains why attention must be treated as an investment decision.
The video explores why account managers, leaders and technical specialists often underestimate the true cost of attention.
It also examines the difference between customers that multiply attention and customers that consume attention.
Some customers create learning, growth, innovation, reference value, profitable revenue and long-term relationship strength.
Others create constant effort, recurring noise, low margin, weak loyalty and limited strategic return.
Both may look busy.
Only one may be worth the attention.
The Chapter 7 Companion Toolkit is designed to help you assess the return on attention across your customer base.
Suggested tools and exercises for this chapter include:
The toolkit is intended to make attention visible.
Because once something becomes visible, it can be managed.
Until then, it quietly disappears into meetings, emails, escalations and very long calls that everyone agrees were “useful” but no one can quite remember why.
Most organisations are better at measuring money than attention.
That is understandable. Money comes with numbers. Attention comes disguised as conversations, meetings, follow-ups, problem-solving, internal lobbying, senior involvement, technical input and emotional energy.
But attention still has a cost.
Sometimes a very high one.
If a senior leader spends half a day on one customer issue, that time is not available for another strategic opportunity.
If a technical specialist repeatedly supports a difficult low-margin account, that expertise is not available for a high-potential customer.
If an account manager is constantly dragged into firefighting, they cannot think strategically.
If service teams are repeatedly pulled into avoidable exceptions, their capacity for reliable delivery elsewhere starts to suffer.
Attention has an opportunity cost.
And opportunity cost is the ghost in many account management conversations.
It is present, but rarely invited to speak.
Strategic Account Management becomes more serious when we begin asking:
What return are we getting on the attention invested here?
That return may not always be immediate revenue.
Good strategic accounts can create value in many ways. They may generate profitable growth, innovation, learning, market credibility, reference value, access to new sectors, product insight, strategic partnership or long-term resilience.
Those are real returns.
But we need to be honest about them.
We should not use “strategic potential” as a polite way of avoiding difficult commercial questions.
Some accounts consume enormous attention because they are poorly behaved, internally political, operationally complex, low margin or simply very good at transferring their problems to us.
That may be manageable if the account creates sufficient value.
But if it does not, we need to think carefully.
Attention spent badly is not neutral.
It damages other opportunities.
It weakens the organisation’s ability to focus.
It tires people out.
It teaches the wrong customers that noise gets rewarded.
It starves the right customers of the thought and care they deserve.
This is why the economics of attention matter.
Not because we want to turn customer relationships into sterile accounting exercises.
But because serious relationships require serious choices.
When attention is invested well, it compounds. Trust deepens. Access improves. Customer understanding grows. Innovation becomes possible. Value becomes more visible. The account becomes more resilient and more useful to both sides.
When attention is invested badly, it evaporates.
People are busy, but value does not grow.
And business has far too many ways of being busy without being valuable.
The goal is not to spend less attention.
The goal is to spend attention better.
Attention has a cost. Strategic Account Management must earn a return on it.
Choose one account that consumes significant attention.
Then ask:
Then complete this sentence:
The return on attention in this account is…
Be honest.
If the answer is uncomfortable, it may be useful.
This chapter comes from seeing how easily organisations underestimate the cost of customer attention.
Attention rarely appears as a line item in the accounts. But it affects almost everything: service capacity, leadership focus, sales productivity, technical availability, employee energy and strategic progress.
The thinking in this chapter connects to:
Useful themes to explore further include:
The central lesson is this:
Attention is valuable. Treat it as an investment, not an unlimited supply.
Thank you for reading Chapter 7 of Where Value Lives.
This chapter matters because it makes attention commercial.
If attention is scarce, then attention has value.
If attention has value, then it must be invested wisely.
That does not make account management colder. It makes it more responsible.
The best customers do not simply consume our attention. They help turn it into recognised value, learning, trust, growth and mutual progress.
Those are the accounts where attention can compound.
And those are the accounts where Strategic Account Management earns its keep.
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.
Because attention has a cost.
And strategic value must earn it.
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.