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Publications
  • Winter 2013
  • Article
  • MIT Sloan Management Review

How to Identify the Best Customers for Your Business

By: Frank V. Cespedes, James P. Dougherty and Ben S. Skinner III
  • Format:Print
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Abstract

How can businesses achieve profitable growth so that their costs don’t grow faster than sales? This article focuses on scaling a venture’s sales process and provides a methodology for identifying core customers and some implications for governance criteria and potential product changes as well as sales management.

Keywords

Customer Relationship Management; Growth Management; Sales

Citation

Cespedes, Frank V., James P. Dougherty, and Ben S. Skinner III. "How to Identify the Best Customers for Your Business ." MIT Sloan Management Review 54, no. 2 (Winter 2013): 53–59.
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More from the Authors

    • June 2025
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    TagHive: Edtech Pricing and Distributor Decisions

    By: Isamar Troncoso, Frank V. Cespedes and Stacy Straaberg
    • March–April 2025
    • European Business Review

    Getting Value from Digital Technologies

    By: Frank Cespedes and Georg Krentzel
    • March 27, 2025
    • Harvard Business Review (website)

    How One Company Used AI to Broaden Its Customer Base

    By: Sunil Gupta and Frank V. Cespedes
More from the Authors
  • TagHive: Edtech Pricing and Distributor Decisions By: Isamar Troncoso, Frank V. Cespedes and Stacy Straaberg
  • Getting Value from Digital Technologies By: Frank Cespedes and Georg Krentzel
  • How One Company Used AI to Broaden Its Customer Base By: Sunil Gupta and Frank V. Cespedes
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