Choose Your Customer: How to Compete Against the Digital Giants and Thrive

Two top specialists in profitable growth and innovative customer-supplier relationships show companies of all sizes how to compete with the tech giants—by choosing and providing peerless value to the right customers for long-term success.

Every year, managers at companies large and small are finding it harder to compete with the likes of Google and Amazon, who are muscling into their businesses, stealing their customers, and cornering every conceivable market and service. There is, however, a way for companies to survive—and win—in this era of digital behemoths. Choose Your Customer is a powerful, consumer-targeted guide that can help managers level the playing field against their biggest competitors. Written by Jonathan Byrnes, the legendary MIT-based expert on profits, pricing, and strategy, and John Wass, a key member of the team that made Staples a major national brand, Choose Your Customer shows managers how to:

• Identify the customers who are the most profitable—and focus on them
• Provide services and experiences that can’t be replicated by the tech giants, no matter how much data they have, or how much automation they use.
• Support your chosen customers’ diverse and rapidly evolving needs to accelerate profitability and growth.

These customer-driven strategies enable leaders to build a uniquely targeted business that the digital giants just can’t match. From unbeatable customer service to superior pricing and product selection, Choose Your Customer provides detailed and actionable advice on how to compete successfully with the big guys and how to increase profits as a result.

About the Authors

Jonathan Byrnes is founding partner and chairman of Profit Isle, a highly successful MIT spin-off SaaS software company that helps organizations increase profits by 10–30 percent using its profitability analytics and management process. A widely followed thought leader on profitable growth and innovative customer-supplier relationships, Byrnes is a frequent speaker and writer who has advised over 100 companies and institutions. He earned a doctorate from Harvard, and has been a Senior Lecturer at MIT for 30 years. In addition to his popular HBS column, “The Bottom Line,” he is the author of Islands of Profit in a Sea of Red Ink, an Inc. Best Book for Business Owners.

John Wass is the CEO of Profit Isle. Under his leadership, the company has managed the profit acceleration of over $100 billion in client revenues across multiple industries and has become the preeminent SaaS software company specializing in managing profitable growth. Previously, he was a key member of the management team that grew Staples from three stores to over 1,000 nationwide, serving as Senior Vice President. Wass also served as CEO of WaveMark, an innovative multimillion-dollar company that pioneered RFID tracking for medical devices. He has lectured at MIT for over a decade.