Brad Kuvin
Editorial Director

Mastering Customer-Portfolio Management

Without strategy, everything looks like an opportunity. You’ve likely heard this phrase before, as have I, but its message seems to have recently been amplified as small to midsized metal formers become increasingly selective about with whom they choose to do business. Such a process requires managers to carefully evaluate and gauge customer profitability, and strategically manage the company’s customer base to optimize value. The practice is called customer-portfolio management (CPM.

Walk through any shop and you’ll hear it: “We can quote that.” Or, “Yeah, we can make that work.” Before long, a company finds itself chasing every RFQ that lands in the inbox, stretching people, equipment and priorities in too many directions.

Such was the crux of a conversation I had recently with a trio of executives from metal forming and fabricating companies, as we prepared for our panel discussion as part of MetalForming’s upcoming Metal Fabrication Strategy Summit (November 18-20). The panel discussion, one of six on the event schedule, focuses on Growing Your Customer Base, and will delve into several topics. Among them:

• How to develop and contribute value-added up-front offerings (think design for manufacture and prototyping services) to attract new customers and retain existing ones.
• Becoming the source of knowledge for prospective customers, especially those with relatively new buyers issuing RFQs.
• How to manage projects requiring quick turnaround, including requests to turn around quotes in one day (or less!), and one-week production lead times.
• The move away from search-engine optimization (SEO) to generative-search optimization (GSO). Yes, much of the website enhancements companies have made to drive SEO now take a back seat to GSO efforts to score high with artificial-intelligence-driven searches.

Our distinguished panel: Chris Zuzick, vice president of Waukesha Metal Products; Colin Cosgrove, incoming president of Laystrom Mfg.; and Mike Lauber, chairman and CEO of TuscoMFG.