Spain needs 200-300 more B2B companies, medium-sized and with a strong international presence and fully specialized in their field. We need many more companies like Saica, Técnicas Reunidas, Abengoa, Viscofan, Metalquímica, etc.
Exactly 10 years ago, in May 2010, as Director and Editor-in-Chief of CM Clienting & Management Magazine, I had the opportunity to collaborate with Professor Luis Huete on the “From Leader to Leader” edition, an edition that deserved special relevance for two very important reasons. First, to be able to count on the participation of one of the world’s leading experts in Management and, second, to coincide this participation with the “International Consumer Day” Special Edition, a clear tribute to the greatest asset of organizations in the 21st century: customers.
Although 10 years have passed since this conversation with Professor Huete, many of his recommendations are still valid today and are applicable for the coming years. For many, including myself, this is transcendence , that your thought is so powerful that it remains valid indefinitely and helps other generations in their search for a better path.
“History has put before us 30 years - 20 at the moment - in which a substantial part of the institutions of our civilization and the elements of our culture will be reconfigured.”
Professor Luis Huete
History
Bruno Méndez. On March 15, 1962, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, in a letter sent to Congress as President of the United States of America, made this wish come true: “Being a consumer, by definition, includes vp technical email lists us all. We are the largest economic group in the marketplace that affects and is affected by almost all public and private economic decisions… but we are the only important group whose views are often not heard.”
In honour of this declaration and this date, every year since 1983, 15 March is celebrated as “World Consumer Rights Day”. It is an occasion to celebrate the basic rights of consumers, to demand and remember that these rights must be fulfilled and to protest against market abuses and social injustices that prevent their fulfilment.
Almost 50 years have passed since that date and today, consumers are beginning to become aware of our ability to affect the decisions of organizations in our market relations. Also, in a constant effort to be competitive and in an exercise of balance, more and more organizations are aware that the path of “Building with Consumers and Clients” is the only possible option.
Luis, taking into account the last decades, what are the most important aspects we have learned during this journey of encounters and disagreements between organizations and consumers, and where do we stand in 2019 looking to the future in terms of taking advantage of the benefits that good management of the Company-Customer Relationship can offer to the companies that take the best care of it?
Luis Huete. To have more clients and keep them, you have to improve the service, innovate in the value proposition, monitor the relationship, create more aspirational value in the brand, unite the human team, etc.
The goal of companies is to increase the recurrence of the clients they acquire. Recurrence is more years of average relationship and a better margin per client. That is customer capitalism versus financial capitalism, which has disappointed us so much in the last three decades.
luis-huete-b2b-cx-growth
It is increasingly clear that the reason for a company's existence is to have more customers and keep them.
With more and more recurring clients, there is more income and more stability in that income. With stable income and a cost model designed realistically, with income in mind, value is generated for the shareholder in a sustained manner.
My hope is that we as consumers will tip the balance of the market toward companies that practice customer capitalism versus financial capitalism where customer considerations are always subordinated to the economic priorities of the business.
Economy
Bruno Méndez. Without intending to go into a retrospective of the last economic period -we were referring to the period 2008-2010-, I do think it is appropriate to mention that we are increasingly beginning to hear voices that are giving us news that are, in a way, hopeful, even though we know that we are very far from a stable and desired economic future.
However, in this possible situation in which we begin to glimpse "the light at the end of the tunnel" it is true that there are many voices that do not place any confidence in the Spanish future, no matter how much some try to contradict such messages.
Given these circumstances, there are many decisions to be made and future success will probably not lie in managing a majority of correct decisions but rather in knowing how to coordinate the correct integration and synergies that can be derived from multiple initiatives.
That being the case, are we in Spain prepared to face with guarantees of success the upcoming challenges that we will have to face in the near future and to what extent can we support our path to recovery in international markets where Spain still has a certain advantage over other foreign investors?
