The Customer Learning Curve examines every aspect of selling a product or service from the customer?s point of view. It enables you to take an integrated, customer-centered approach and help move the customer through the learning curve more effectively. It helps you cope with too many choices, deal effectively with disruption, make midcourse corrections, assess the progress of a new product or service, and assist top management in making good choices. Companies need a strong model for understanding customers, but their approach is often piecemeal because each department focuses on a different component ? technology, price, service, communications, and distribution. This book starts with the premise that a company?s most important marketing process is the one that goes on in the customer?s mind. From the customers? perspective, the company?s division of labor is irrelevant: The mental process of learning about, deciding to buy, purchasing, and using a product or service is a single continuum. That continuum is the Customer Learning Curve (CLC), that ranges from customers having a need (but perhaps not even knowing it) to being loyal -- repeat users. The CLC is a proven model, grounded in years of research and consulting with business-to-business and consumer goods companies?companies that have consistently achieved breakthrough results from their CLC-guided marketing efforts. This book will give you the information you need to join these marketing success stories and make the CLC work for your business.



About the Author

Karl Hellman is co-founder of Resultrek, an international management consulting firm specializing in strategic marketing, marketing skills development, and customer relationship management. Mr. Hellman has built three successful consulting practices over his 23 years as a management consultant and has worked with more than 1,200 strategic marketers to help them improve their results. Currently his client base is divided equally between telecommunications (clients include MCI/WorldCom, SBC, BellSouth, Telefonica, Telia, et al.) and energy companies (clients include Southern Company, Northeast Utilities, Commonwealth Edison, Midlands Electrical Board, et al.). He is a sought-after speaker on marketing effectiveness, strategic planning, idea generation, and customer satisfaction. His writings have appeared in Telephony, Public Utilities Fortnightly, and Marketing News. Mr. Hellman holds a BA in Economics from Beloit College (Phi Beta Kappa, Cum Laude) and an MS in Managerial Economics & Decision Sciences from Northwestern University. He may be reached at khellman@resultrek.com.