when i was a consultant at mckinsey working with fortune 500 companies, and even now when i am running my own company, one metric that i’ve always kept an eye on is customer lifetime value — that is, the estimated value of a customer relationship, based on the average customer’s projected future visits and spend per visit.

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almost every fortune 500 company, in industries ranging from retail to hospitality to telecom, measures this number, understands what drives it, and has a strategy to maximize it. small businesses are a different story; most are in the dark. that’s a mistake.

click here for the full story at inc. magazine: do you value customer relationships like you should?