{"id":7071066,"date":"2026-10-13T22:23:32","date_gmt":"2026-10-13T22:23:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/accountants4yourbusiness.co.uk\/analytics\/a-ceo-whos-customer-retention-heart-had-hardened\/"},"modified":"2026-10-13T22:23:32","modified_gmt":"2026-10-13T22:23:32","slug":"a-ceo-whos-customer-retention-heart-had-hardened","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/accountants4yourbusiness.co.uk\/?p=7071066","title":{"rendered":"A CEO Who&#8217;s Customer Retention Heart Had Hardened"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"post-body-100845091629576579\" itemprop=\"description articleBody\">\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">Back in the days when somebody paid to put you on an airplane (i.e. pre-video-conference days), I was asked by a CEO to visit his company to address a comment I made in a project writeup.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">The comment?<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">&#8220;Until &#8216;brand x&#8217; realizes they only retain 33% of last year&#8217;s buyer file and invests significantly in customer acquisition efforts, &#8216;brand x&#8221; will continue to contract.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">At this time I had worked with the brand for more than seven years.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">I was asked to present my findings to several operational teams within the company. At the end of the day, the Executive Team gathered with the CEO. It was my job to explain my findings to the CEO.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">The CEO did not like my message. He took umbrage with my comment that his brand would contract. He began to yell. His face reddened. He eventually slammed his fist on the table hard enough to cause tendon damage, telling me that I didn&#8217;t understand business, that his team would crack the code for customer loyalty.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">At this time, his annual rebuy rates had already declined by about five percentage points (i.e. from 45% to 40%) over a seven-year period of time. I decided to chime in. My comment would end our business relationship. Here&#8217;s what I said.<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial;\"><i>&#8220;You&#8217;ve already had seven years as CEO to crack the loyalty code. Instead, your rebuy rates have contracted over your tenure. What makes you think you the next seven years will be different?&#8221;<\/i><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">With that, I lost a lot of $$$, because this client was very good to me.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">Would you want an analytics consultant to tell you the truth?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">Or do you want an analytics consultant to make you feel good?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">This CEO wanted the latter.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">The problem, by the way, was not fixed. Even after a new Management Team took over.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">You do not solve customer retention problems. I have a client who does an amazing job of getting as close as you can to solving customer retention problems. They&#8217;ve figured out the fusion of merchandising strategy and marketing targeting solutions. You CAN make a difference. You CAN&#8217;T solve the problem.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">Your ability to retain your customer base is largely constrained by the merchandise you sell. If you sell stuff that doesn&#8217;t sell well in summer, why would you retain customers in summer? And if you cannot retain customers in summer, why would your retention rate be high?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">The business I&#8217;m talking about here had a season when the majority of their sales happened &#8230; the customer simply didn&#8217;t need their products or services year-round. By default, their business was calibrated to NOT retain customers each year.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">Most of your businesses are calibrated to NOT retain customers. That&#8217;s business &#8211; you succeed for other reasons!!!\u00a0 You know this to be true if your average number of annual purchases per twelve-month buyer is under 2.0. Somewhere between 2.5 and 3.0 purchases per year is the spot where retention sings and loyalty becomes apparent.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">No amount of fist-slamming fixes a retention problem. Only year-round appealing merchandise does that.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Back in the days when somebody paid to put you on an airplane (i.e. pre-video-conference days), I was asked by a CEO to visit his company to address a comment I made in a project writeup. The comment? &#8220;Until &#8216;brand x&#8217; realizes they only retain 33% of last year&#8217;s buyer file and invests significantly in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12033],"tags":[11527,13092,174608,1484,14962,15777],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-7071066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-analytics","tag-ceo","tag-customer","tag-hardened","tag-heart","tag-retention","tag-whos"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A CEO Who&#039;s Customer Retention Heart Had Hardened - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/accountants4yourbusiness.co.uk\/?p=7071066\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A CEO Who&#039;s Customer Retention Heart Had Hardened - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Back in the days when somebody paid to put you on an airplane (i.e. pre-video-conference days), I was asked by a CEO to visit his company to address a comment I made in a project writeup. 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