Chapter 6. Resources

Where Value Lives • Chapter 6 Companion

The Customer Attention Portfolio

Not every important customer deserves the same level of organisational attention. The challenge is to decide deliberately where scarce leadership time, innovation, expertise and organisational effort can create the greatest long-term mutual value.

Chapter 6 moves Strategic Account Management from principle into portfolio judgement.

Once we accept that organisational attention is finite, we have to decide where that attention should actually go.

Revenue alone cannot answer that question.

A large customer may be commercially important but strategically limited. Another account may currently be smaller, yet create access, learning, innovation, reputation or future capability that makes it far more important to the organisation’s future.

The Customer Attention Portfolio provides a structured way to have that conversation.

It is not a mechanism for declaring some customers “good” and others “bad”. It is a decision-support framework for deciding where scarce organisational attention should be invested.

Fred’s Comments

A Big Customer Is Not Automatically a Strategic Customer

This sounds obvious when written down.

In practice, it is one of the most difficult habits for organisations to break.

Large customers attract attention.

They appear prominently in revenue reports. Senior people recognise their names. Their problems create noise. Their opportunities appear important.

And very quickly, commercial size becomes confused with strategic value.

But the two are not the same thing.

A customer can be enormously important to our current revenue while offering relatively little opportunity for deeper strategic value.

Another customer may be much smaller today, but help us develop a new capability, enter a new market, create valuable innovation or build a relationship that could matter enormously in the future.

That is why I think portfolio decisions become much more useful when we stop asking:

How important is this customer?

and instead ask:

What kind of attention does this relationship justify?

That wording forces a better conversation.

It asks us to examine the customer through two lenses.

First, what strategic value does this relationship represent to us?

Second, what level of organisational attention are we actually investing?

Those two questions can expose uncomfortable truths.

We may discover customers receiving large amounts of senior attention because they have always received it.

We may find attractive future relationships that are badly under-invested.

We may also discover accounts labelled strategic where there is very little evidence that either organisation sees the relationship that way.

That is precisely what a good framework should do.

It should not make the decision for us.

It should make the decision harder to avoid.

— Fred

“Organisational attention is finite. Every hour invested in one customer is an hour unavailable to another.” — Customer Attention Portfolio, Where Value Lives

Key Takeaways

  • Customer size and strategic importance are not the same thing.
  • The Customer Attention Portfolio is designed to support judgement about where scarce organisational attention should be invested.
  • Strategic value should be assessed using evidence rather than habit, reputation or revenue alone.
  • Customer value must also be understood through the customer’s eyes, not simply from the supplier’s perspective.
  • Some relationships may be receiving more attention than their strategic value justifies.
  • Others may represent significant future value but remain under-invested strategic assets.
  • Portfolio position should influence executive attention, cross-functional involvement and future investment.
  • Portfolio decisions are not permanent. Relationships, markets, strategies and organisational capabilities change.

Chapter 6 Download

Customer Attention Portfolio

This Executive Implementation Guide helps you move from intuition to a more disciplined assessment of where organisational attention should be invested.

It takes you through:

Customer Profile
Understanding Customer Value
Customer Value Assessment
Strategic Importance Assessment
Customer Attention Portfolio Positioning
Attention Strategy
Executive Attention Planning
Customer Attention Action Planning
Continuous Review

Download the Customer Attention Portfolio Guide

Executive Implementation Guide • Chapter 6 of Where Value Lives

Questions to Take Back to Your Account Team

  1. Are we confusing customer revenue with strategic importance?
  2. Which customers influence our future capability, learning or innovation?
  3. Would losing this customer damage something more important than current revenue?
  4. Which relationships are receiving significant organisational attention without clear evidence that the investment remains justified?
  5. Which customers represent strategic value but are currently under-invested?
  6. Are senior executives involved in the relationships where their attention can actually create value?
  7. What evidence would cause us to move a customer from one portfolio position to another?
  8. If we had to reduce organisational attention across the portfolio by 20%, where would we reduce it first — and why?

Try This With AI

AI can be useful as a challenger in portfolio discussions, provided it does not replace commercial judgement or invent missing evidence.

Act as a Strategic Account Management portfolio thinking partner. I want to evaluate one customer using the Customer Attention Portfolio. Customer: [Describe the customer] Current commercial value: [Insert] Future commercial potential: [Insert] Customer strategic priorities: [Insert] What we believe the customer values: [Insert] Strategic learning or capability this relationship creates for us: [Insert] Innovation opportunities: [Insert] Reputational or market value: [Insert] Current executive involvement: [Insert] Current cross-functional involvement: [Insert] Current level of organisational attention: [Insert] Using the Customer Attention Portfolio principles: 1. Separate current commercial importance from longer-term strategic value. 2. Identify which conclusions are supported by evidence and which are assumptions. 3. Assess what strategic value this relationship may create beyond revenue. 4. Assess whether our current level of organisational attention appears too high, too low or broadly appropriate. 5. Identify evidence that could support positioning the customer as: – Strategic Partner – Under-Invested Strategic Asset – Emerging Strategic Opportunity – Transactional Relationship 6. Do not select a final portfolio position where the evidence is insufficient. Instead identify what information is missing. 7. Suggest the level and type of executive attention that may be appropriate. 8. Identify which internal functions may need to become more involved. 9. Identify three risks of over-investing attention in this relationship. 10. Identify three risks of under-investing attention in this relationship. 11. Suggest five questions we should ask the customer before finalising our portfolio judgement. 12. Finish with the three most important pieces of evidence we should obtain before making a resource-allocation decision. Do not invent facts about the customer. Clearly distinguish: – evidence – inference – assumption – missing information Professional judgement must remain with the account team.

Tip: Use AI to challenge the reasoning behind a portfolio decision, not to make the portfolio decision for you.

Keep Exploring Where Value Lives

The Customer Attention Portfolio helps us decide where organisational attention should be invested.

But being placed in the strategic part of a portfolio does not automatically create a strategic relationship.

How do we know when an important customer relationship has genuinely become strategic?

Chapter 7 explores the transition from important customer to strategic relationship and examines the evidence that should exist before we commit disproportionate organisational attention.

← Back to Chapter 5 Continue to Chapter 7 →