Customize your strategy to the unique needs and opportunities of your own company. Resist relying exclusively on standard performance levers, no matter how entrenched they are in your industry.

Our central point here, as elsewhere, is that your performance management system has to be both internally consistent and integrated well into the rest of your business model. All the parts have to work together.

Here's a common pattern: You're new. You're scrappy. You'll do whatever it takes to meet the needs of your clients, which means growth by any means necessary. If a customer wants to give your standard offering a slightly different spin, sure, you'll give it a try. Your effort is also known as customizing your product or service. At this point, there's such a premium on developing customer relationships that you're not thinking about how to pull this off in a profitable way. Instead, you're thinking about survival. If you can keep a growing number of customers happy, then good things are more likely to happen.

Our central point here, as elsewhere, is that your performance management system has to be both internally consistent and integrated well into the rest of your business model. All the parts have to work together.

Here's a common pattern: You're new. You're scrappy. You'll do whatever it takes to meet the needs of your clients, which means growth by any means necessary. If a customer wants to give your standard offering a slightly different spin, sure, you'll give it a try. Your effort is also known as customizing your product or service. At this point, there's such a premium on developing customer relationships that you're not thinking about how to pull this off in a profitable way. Instead, you're thinking about survival. If you can keep a growing number of customers happy, then good things are more likely to happen.