Advice for CEOs

Among the biggest business risks is having your sales concentrated in only a few customers. Lenders, investors and prospective buyers of your company are sure to look hard at this issue. How have you seen well run companies take steps to diversify their customer base?

Nothing is more important to a business, especially an emerging growth company, than customer focus. Sales growth depends on knowing and understanding your customers. As companies grow to the point that they enter NO MAN'S LAND, the stage where they are too big to be small and too small to be big, they tend to lose intimate contact with customers that they once had. The value proposition that motivated customers to buy the company’s goods and services place gets murky.