The Leaky Bucket of Retailing™

As sound and practical as it is to focus on your best customers, instead many companies exhaust their budgets and management energy in driving short term sales only. They spend huge sums of money to fill the top of the bucket with new customers, while their best customers are constantly leaking out of holes in the bottom of the bucket. There are many explanations for this, some are cultural, some technical and some due to the frenetic pace and no patience nature of retailing today. However, at the end of the day profit is profit and it is on the table for those companies who embrace a balanced marketing strategy of retaining existing customers and plugging the "leaky bucket", along with the acquisistion of new customers.