Click to read the article published in Money Wise in the April 2025 edition.
In the boardrooms of many ambitious businesses, the conversations often orbit around features, production timelines and quarterly sales targets. It’s a familiar tune where one is focused on churning out the next ‘widget’ that is faster, cheaper and shinier. This is the product mindset: a worldview that sees growth as a function of output.
But here’s the inconvenient truth. In a world of infinite choice and near-zero switching costs, selling a product is no longer enough. Winning in today’s economy demands more than great features. What it requires is a customer mindset.
And companies that don’t make this mental leap are leaving serious money on the table.
The Silent Killer of Growth: Mis-valuing the Customer
A national retail chain proudly told us how they had just smashed quarterly sales targets after a big promotion. Thousands of units moved. Green arrows everywhere.
But beneath the surface, trouble was brewing.
Customer growth was flat. Loyalty metrics were down. Repeat sales were falling. Why? The promotion attracted one-time bargain hunters, and not high-value loyal customers.
When we were briefed about this issue as their brand consulting partner, we ran a Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) analysis. The results were blunt and as we expected: their most loyal customers were worth 5x more than the average and were driven by repeat purchases, referrals and cross-category spending. And yet, they were being ignored in favour of chasing product volume.
Our client was pouring resources into short-term wins, while their real growth engine was quietly walking out the door.
That’s when the CEO realised: “We are not in the product business, we are in the customer business. And that must be our focus.”
Product Mindset vs. Customer Mindset: The Real Difference
Let me break this down to make it clear:
| Mindset | Business Focus | Key Metric of Success Measurement by the Business | Outcome |
| Product Mindset | Features, SKUs, efficiency | Units sold | Linear growth |
| Customer Mindset | Relationships, value, trust | Lifetime value per customer | Exponential growth |
How Short-Term Thinking Destroys Long-Term Value
One of the most dangerous blind spots in a product-led organisation is the absence of Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) in decision-making.
Consider this: a client may spend only $5000 a year. A product mindset might flag them as low value customers. But what if they stay loyal for 10+ years and refer five new clients — each of whom stays just as long? Suddenly, that low value client becomes a massive growth engine.
CLV is not just a marketing metric, but the lens through which strategic decisions must be made. When you ignore it, you risk starving the very relationships that could power your next wave of growth.
A True Story: One Decision, 13 Additional Customers
When our eldest daughter was being bullied in school, we moved her to a small private school known for its strong values and supportive culture.
We were so impressed that we enrolled our two younger daughters there too. But it didn’t stop there. We told five other families who enrolled 10 children between them. Most of those children stayed for an average of seven years in the school.
Let us tally that:
1 family → 3 enrolments → 5 family referrals → 10 more enrolments
All staying 7 years on average.
This equates to a total of 91 years of school fees.
A product mindset would see the value of a single initial enrolment. A customer mindset sees a network effect powered by customer loyalty and advocacy.
So what was my customer lifetime value to that school?
Not just tuition, but reputation, trust and 91 years of customer lifetime revenue streams.
Your Customers Are Not Equal, And That’s The Point Business Leaders Must Remember
Imagine two customers:
- Customer A buys once, never returns and leaves a lukewarm review.
- Customer B buys regularly, refers five friends and engages with your other products.
Which one should you build your business around?
Hint: Customer B is your growth accelerator, Customer A is friction.
When you segment your customers by engagement instead of by their spending, you gain clarity on who fuels your growth and who is quietly undermining your brand. This allows you to make decisions and manage your customers based on true value rather than transactional product sales.
The Economic Wake of Disengagement
Remember that a disengaged customer is not someone who is neutral. They are a risk to your business. This is because they:
- Spread negative word-of-mouth
- Erode brand trust
- Dampen team morale
- Drive up churn and acquisition costs
Their impact compounds over time. And what is worse is that they often do not show up in traditional financial models… until it is too late.
From Widgets to Wallets: Making the Shift
To escape the product trap, we encourage our clients to:
- Track real value by moving beyond annual sales and measuring lifetime value, referral impact and cross-sell adoption.
- Segment by brand attitude by identifying their most engaged customers and most damaging detractors. Then we help them design and take corrective action.
- Invest in advocacy to create experiences that customers want to talk about. Referrals are not asked for, but are created and earned.
- Enable customer-facing teams by empowering them not to just resolve issues, but involve them in the ideation and delivery of experiences and propositions that are worthy of recommendation becomes critical.
Final Thought: Growth Doesn’t Come From Products; It Comes From People
We live in a time where products can be copied overnight. But trust? That’s rare. And brand engagement? That’s priceless.
The organisations that will lead the next decade won’t be the ones with the biggest catalogues. They will be the ones who understand that the most valuable product is a loyal customer.
Because in the end, you don’t scale through features. You scale through relationships.
NPS®, Net Promoter® and Net Promoter Score® are registered trademarks of NICE Satmetrix Systems, Inc., Bain & Company and Fred Reichheld.
Leave A Comment