Managing Customer Demands

Naturally, there is a relationship between a company's ability to deliver on the demands of its customers and its ability to grow revenue over time. However, there is often quite a large time lag between the two. Short-term revenue and profit performance are inefficient proxies for whether or not the product strategy is on track. These are flawed, wildly lagging indicators of the effectiveness of product strategy, especially in subscription businesses. If you operate in a business that sells annual subscriptions, each customer signs up for twelve months at a time and can typically only cancel once a year. This is a revenue model so attractive that every product on the planet seems to be chasing the elusive subscription model. You can even buy deodorant on subscription these days!