Getting & keeping customers

If you don’t have customers, you don’t have a company. This focus is about how you find them and how you serve them. We call finding them marketing and sales, and serving them fulfillment.

• Marketing generates leads. It’s how you find prospects and get them interested in what you offer.
• Sales converts those leads into paying customers, turning that interest into actual revenue.
• Fulfillment is the most variable area, by industry and by company, but a few universal ideas hold up. There are five parts (design, procurement, assembly, delivery, and customer success), and the main thing is knowing which ones you’re responsible for, since most companies don’t use them all. It also matters whether you make to stock or make to order, because that shapes how you design your workflows.