Many marketers spend time with their CRM systems. Expensive cloud-based tools that automate Customer Relationship Management.

Maybe customers don’t want to be managed. They probably don’t.

It might be more useful to think of our most important work as customer relationship leadership.

CRL is voluntary. It’s done with customers and for them, not to them.

It’s not an app, it’s a point of view.

The new price-fixing scandal in the oil business helps us see what happens when industry leadership spends most of its creative time thinking about doing things to customers. This is a symptom of collusion, of stagnation and of false proxies about what’s important. The lazy path is rarely generative and often lurks in the shadows.

May 4, 2024