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?