Keeping Your Customers away from Competitors, Part 8

At the OpenView Venture Partners Market Segmentation Forum in March, 2010, Luke Hohmann, senior advisor at OpenView Venture Partners, held a discussion about the importance of utilization.

The intention of the forum was to give portfolio companies an opportunity to address issues and concerns when it comes to market segmentation. As a company, if you’re not maximizing utilization – both expeditiously and through best practices – your competitors may be able to lure customers away. How can this happen? Your company’s value will be low enough to a customer that a more promising deal, from a more promising company, may be enough for you to lose a customer.

You’ve done all of the hard work to make your offering relevant, but when it’s time to renew, if you haven’t taken the right steps in terms of utilization, you are not putting your company in a position to retain a particular customer.

All companies should focus on keeping utilization as high as possible to retain customers.