What Executives and Thought Leaders Are Saying
With the Relationship Value metric, Linda Sharp has found a quantitative
way for sales to give feedback to executives without being second-guessed.
Her CRI Framework reflects a great respect for and understanding of sales.
She has truly made the sales job easier day-to-day.
Alfred Dipman, Vice President
North American Operations
Linkquest LTD
Applying metrics to marketing was what initially attracted me. As a finance
executive, I was eager to find a comprehensive approach that could help us
bring discipline and control to sales and marketing. The CRI Framework
has put us on a path to both high-profit revenue and improved processes.
Kent Wegener, Vice President of Finance
Otis Spunkmeyer, Inc.
Using the CRI approach, we gained the ability to identify and pursue
high-probability prospects and our success ratio has increased dramatically.
This system has had a substantial and positive impact on our bottom line.
I look forward to refining our processes by implementing more of the framework.
Tom Grotewold, President
Rare Space, Inc.
The intangibles that are the real drivers of enterprise value are the most
difficult to measure and manage. A consequence has been the 80-20 rule
of management, i.e., managers have tended to spend 80 percent of their
time managing factors that are responsible for 20 percent of the value of
the enterprise. We are now witnessing a revolution in management practice
that will be the hallmark of the future winners: metrics and systems
that focus on designing and managing value creating organizations. The
CRI Framework and metrics have the potential to meet this need in the
critical domain of customer relationship management.
Michael M. Mann, PhD
Chairman, EnCompass Knowledge Systems, Inc.
Adjunct Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering
University of Southern California
Well worth an executive read. I have never seen such a clear explanation
of how companies keep themselves from executing their strategy as well
as they could, or from achieving the competitive advantage possible, as
Linda Sharp presents in her book Customer Relationship Intelligence.
She carefully lays out the underlying symptoms of dysfunction in sales
and marketing, the need for change in how these functions are managed,
and provides a simple, practical solution. In my years in market research,
I've seen how these issues can make or break a company.
Mike Kelly, President/CEO
TECHTEL Corporation
Customer Relationship Intelligence brings a whole new perspective to
the challenges of building and maintaining Customer Relationships and
building Customer Equity. Linda Sharp takes the guesswork out of relationship
marketing and brings a “new intelligence” to linking strategy to
execution and profitability.
Robert Stacey, President
Association for the Advancement of
Relationship Marketing
This book is powerful! I especially liked the prescriptive second half of it.
I believe the remedy to the inescapable challenges Linda Sharp laid out
so carefully is very doable. I say this from the perspective of an executive
who helped pioneer the use of data warehouses for customer intelligence.
You do better in marketing if you know the facts. The CRI Framework is
an organized, simple way to build intelligence into process to get unique
customer feedback and the key performance indicators you need to run
your business in real time. When sales people have to focus on short-term
opportunities, they can keep other relationships alive and growing
without having to think too much about it. Imagine the advantage of
knowing which actions to take and when for a higher payback with each
individual customer.
Boyd Pearce, President & CEO
Truviso
A hundred years ago Frederick Winslow Taylor dissected the manufacturing
process, turning it from a “craft” to a “scientific manageable, measurable
process.” Linda Sharp in this book brilliantly helps us understand
that sales and marketing has a set of definable processes that have specific
costs and revenue that are predictable. Concerned about how effective
your sales and marketing functions are? This book will help you quickly
diagnose the root cause of your problems and give you a logical, scientific,
mathematical approach that your sales and marketing team will understand
and embrace.
Jim Horan, President
The One Page Business Plan Company
Every customer-facing executive should read this book. Up to now, customer
metrics have been about measuring our own performance to see how well
we are doing. Linda Sharp’s Relationship Value metric turns this on its
head. Read the book to discover a new and unified way of thinking about
and measuring your customers.
Richard Taylor, Chair and Co-Founder
Business Intelligence SIG
Software Development Forum
The relevant importance of customers and processes to provide insightful
information and intelligence is one of the key disciplines of every organization.
Linda Sharp’s insight and pragmatic approach is just what you
should examine and this book provides the foundation and vision of where
and how you should apply this discipline.
Mark Smith, CEO & EVP Research
Ventana Research
Businesses today have more data available than ever before and so every
business is looking for ways to quantify their performance and to run
their business based on data. With this background, I naturally found
Linda Sharp’s innovative approach to measuring and managing sales
and marketing attractive. Her focus on interactions as the atomic unit
of customer relationships promises to quantify the value of interactions,
and moreover to measure cause-and-effect. Therefore, I quickly became
convinced that her approach to sales and marketing optimization can add
much value to a field that is inherently hard to quantify. She describes
the framework in clear language and she stays away from rambling sentences
and overloaded terminology that so often make conceptual books
difficult to apply in the real world. Linda Sharp has a powerful message
to share. Customer Relationship Intelligence is a promising direction that
holds much potential.
Tilmann Bruckhaus, PhD, Director of Analytics
Numetrics Management Systems
Linda Sharp has written an excellent book on relationships and understanding
relationships in relation to marketing. I had no doubt that
the book would be excellent; she was an early leader in the Institute of
Management Consultants in Strategic Alliances and Teaming. Her
understanding of the relationship model and her belief that marketing
should not be viewed as a cost center or loss leader come together in this
book to move the reader to an understanding of how customer intelligence
and building on customer relationships can result in greater profitability.
This is refreshing in what has become a corporate America belief that
customers are commodities.
Steven A. Savia, MA, CMC, Managing Principal
The Sage Group
Past National Chair, Institute of Management
Consultants, USA
Customers are business partners. Customer service is a profit center.
Outrageous? No. At last someone thinks as I do. In her book Customer
Relationship Intelligence Linda Sharp makes a strong case for customer
retention and why the customer relationship spans a continuum of acquisition,
closing, and retention. Understanding what is going on with
customers all the time is critical to success. Without this intelligence, you
are flying blind. To get it requires collaboration among sales and marketing
and customer service within a unifying framework.
John Poppleton, Product Manager
Applikon, Inc.
The Customer Relationship Intelligence Framework is a unique and
practical method for frontline employees to improve individual customer
profitability and retention. Sales, customer service, and marketing professionals
are empowered through the CRI Framework to make an ongoing
impact that is readily visible and highly appreciated by executives. This
fully customizable solution is a proactive customer advocacy method and
an important component of customer experience management.
Lynn Hunsaker, President, ClearAction, LLC
Past President, Silicon Valley American Marketing Association
Marketing done well is about sustainable customer relationships. Typical
marketing communication is a scatter shot of advertisements and targeted
work via the Internet along demographic lines. Linda Sharp has a clear
message in Customer Relationship Intelligence that makes managing the
relationships, not just customer demographics, the priority. Use this book
to improve support and repeat business with your own customers.
Rick Ellinger, Interim Director
Disaster Planning Initiative
Joint Venture Silicon Valley Network
President, Wireless Communications Alliance
Having worked with countless executives from start-ups to the Fortune
500 in strategic planning and leadership coaching, I know the concern
these executives have for customers and the frustration many of them
feel in not knowing as much as they would like about what motivates
their customers. They have a similar frustration in linking their strategic
plan to operational execution. Now there is a solution. I heartily endorse
Linda Sharp’s book Customer Relationship Intelligence and the actionable
process she describes that will allow executives to have consistent, relevant
data from across their enterprise to manage in real time. She has achieved
simplicity beyond the complexity that has stymied so many.
Marilyn Manning, PhD, CSP, CMC, CEO
The Consulting Team, LLC
Intelligence works best when it focuses on what creates value. And how
better to create value than to develop stronger customer relationships?
Companies fail to create the conditions to acquire and act upon true
customer intelligence—then wonder what became of their brand equity.
It doesn't take too much time to destroy a brand—or even a company—
this way. Linda Sharp’s systematic approach gives us a way to avoid
such a tragedy.
Tim Powell, President
The Knowledge Agency®
Linda Sharp’s approach to measuring the value of each individual customer
relationship puts a framework around what we all know we should do, but
didn't know how to do until now. The real gem in Customer Relationship
Intelligence is that, by knowing where we stand with a customer in real
time, we will be able to proactively and cohesively deliver on the promises
we make. For many corporate executives, this eliminates a major excuse
for not delivering great customer experiences every time.
Sharon Oatway, President & Chief Experience Officer
VereQuest Inc.
The CRI Framework provides a structure for concepts that have never
been properly organized. Through this framework, organizations will be
able to leverage existing metrics in ways not previously possible without
many years of research and refinement. Specifically, providing a structured
methodology for the integration of user behavior, clickstreams, and
customer satisfaction will make those who adopt more agile, competitive,
and customer-focused.
Cameron Turner, CEO
ClickStream Technologies
Linda Sharp’s breakthrough book, Customer Relationship Intelligence,
shows the way to putting the customer at the center of your company, in
ways that are understandable, measurable, and most of all, profitable.
Betsy Burroughs, President
FutureCatalyst
Our work with major brands across North America and Europe has
convinced us that the needs Linda Sharp is discussing here are very real,
and so is the viability of new, emerging solutions her framework accommodates,
including our own 1:1 Optimization work. Her roadmap is
going to become a must-read resource for a new breed of marketers who
want to combine creativity with accountability, harnessing a wave of
new relationship building state-of-the-art, predictive technologies within
a consistent framework. For those who have the courage to lead, the
rewards will be large.
David Beaton, Senior Partner
Custometrics, Inc.
Linda Sharp has created a truly thought provoking book. Customer Relationship
Intelligence describes a cutting edge methodology for improving
effectiveness in building customer relationships and for measuring
the contribution of the marketing and sales organizations to a business’
profitability. I predict that the CRI Framework will become ubiquitous
as the power of determining and measuring the value in customer relationships
is realized.
Ian Jacobsen, CMC, FIMC, Principal
Jacobsen Consulting
Linda Sharp’s new book is an important, leading-edge approach to a long neglected
aspect of customer retention. If America and Western Europe are
to survive globalization with their middle class intact, they will have to look
closely at customer relationships, which may be the central margin of profit
in the future paradigm of business competitiveness, especially with high-end
goods and services. American business and world commerce need a second
look at customer service and perhaps a new look at the way we do business.
Sharp has started us on that journey with her unique book which will soon
be seen as the future of sales and marketing. Professionals and professors
will both benefit from integrating Sharp’s thesis into their practice.
Professor Mike Whitty, College of Business Administration
University of Detroit Mercy
Director, The Future of Work Institute
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