TLC With LCV in Your Wholesale Business

Being a business that may concern itself with wholesale sunglasses or items in bulk, you may think LCV is not that applicable to you. After all, your business would be more related to building relationships with other businesses,  like retailers. But LCV, or lifetime customer value or LCV should be something you should be looking into. After all, the number of entities conducting wholesale businesses may not be that large, unlike, say, individual customers who are in steady and constant supply. Not too many businesses would have wholesale sunglasses as their line of business, which is why you would need to see their value in them.

Image source: The Way to Happiness

So, what is this LCV you've been reading? Simply put, Lifetime Customer Value (LCV) is:

• Assessing how a relationship between a business and a customer will continue into the future.

As a business with a limited market, you should know how to asses how far along the road a business will have a relationship with you. As mentioned earlier, there isn't an infinite pool of businesses that will be interested in dealing with you. Thus, you need to know how long a relationship is with one business so you can have the foresight of when you would need to deal with other partners.

• The relationship is seen as something that should benefit both the business (continuous cash flow) and the customer (continuous receiving of quality products/services).

Of course, knowing the lifespan of your relationship with another business will allow you to cherish and value whatever it is you have with the other party. This will give you the motivation to provide the best product and service you can give, and in turn, allow them to pay you properly. 

• LCV’s focus is to set up and continue a healthy relationship with the customer, as opposed to generating a one-off sale relationship.

Exerting all your efforts to preserving relationships with customers provides for a healthy relationship between the two parties, as you, the provider will not have the mentality of "let me just finish this transaction and be done with this customer." Instead, you will be providing your best, knowing that whatever the result is will be crucial in determining whether your relationship with the business will extend longer or not. This is especially decisive with a wholesale business because as mentioned earlier, you do not have the luxury of an easily replenish-able pool of customers. Once business A breaks a relationship with you, business B may take a while to come along.