I've identified just two strategies that cause businesses to thrive. 1. A robust and reasonably inexpensive new customer acquisition program. 2. The ability of a business to consistently introduce, cultivate, and promote new items to best-seller status.

The acquisition will always be tied to growth, but the mantra of “acquire, acquire, acquire” is ill-conceived. With CLV at its center, the new mantra is “acquire, inquire, acquire.” See what I did there? Inquiring into why your customers buy, whether you are reading the story of the data, or asking them directly, will help avoid churn and burn.

But profitability is only a scorecard providing an after-the-fact measure of a business’s health. The real measure of a healthy business lies in the strength, depth, and length of its relationship with its core customers. Customer loyalty is the basic fact that drives profitability in any case.