In a previous post on account management, I talked about creating opportunities to sell more stuff to your customers.
The value has to work both ways though. Your customer needs to feel they will get value from transacting business with you, but you need to feel that you will get value from the deal too.
If you don’t feel like you both got a great deal, then one side feels like the transaction was unequal and the balance has shifted. This is a major cause of customers churning. They don’t feel like they got value for their money. They didn’t see the return they were expecting.
If you don’t feel like you got a great deal, it’s probably because you ended up having to do too much work or deliver too much for what you were receiving. The opportunity cost to you of giving up another deal with a better margin can be significant.
Make sure the value to you – value to me equilibrium is sustained to keep long term relationships with your customers.
Paul Dilger's blog 
In construction, some of us have been trying for 20 years or so to roll out the concept of Partnering. The Egan Report — one of the first inquiries commissioned by the new Labour Govt in ’97 — showed how creating trust-based partnships between many members of the supply chain could deliver efficiencies in building projects in a way that the car industry had been doing for years.
With Partnering, Value Equilibrium is a major factor in reducing the customer “churn” you speak of, where a supplier & client can openly agree on a ‘deal’ that works for them both, and then use the same formula, project after project after project.
The client doesn’t have to go through the Tender process, honing the price/spec to within an inch of its life with one supplier after another, and the supplier can spend time concentrating on delivering the best quality of service.
I try with all my clients to engender a feeling of trustworthiness and credibility, so they might be tempted to join me in the pursuit of the Egan Dream!
The Construction Industry at large, however, seems predisposed to be untrustworthy, adversarial and ultimately, inefficient. 😦
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Thanks, Andy, well though out and argued. Many industries continue to strive towards getting the supply chain efficient. I have a pal in automotive, and they get squeezed from both sides, the raw material suppliers and the car makers. It’s a tough gig, a constant drive for efficiency and negligible margins. I think this has a lot to do with my very first ever post http://wp.me/p2wGPM-1 :-).
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