PRIME YOUR BUSINESS FOR NEW CUSTOMER GROWTHOn today’s episode, we have Mike Ferranti, Founder and CEO of Endai. This episode is the first part of our six-part series on The (Real) Cost of Customer Acquisition and How to Do it Right. In part 1, Damian and Mike give a high-level overview of customer acquisition.New Customer Acquisition: the (Real) Cost of Customer Acquisition [Part 2]New Customer Acquisition: Marketing Strategies to Scale up your Acquisition [Part 3]New Customer Acquisition: Acquiring your Most Valuable Buyers (MVBs) [Part 4]New Customer Acquisition: Marketing Cost vs. Business Investment [Part 5]Mike kicks off the interview with a story from a CEO round table that shapes the rest of the interview. Spoiler Alert: no matter how large a company, there is always the need for net new customers.Mike then tackles the question, “What is customer acquisition?” This might seem simple, but it isn’t—thanks to how widely companies differ on the meaning of “new customer.”Damian asks the question that every business needs to ask themselves: “What is the strategic value or importance of customer acquisition?” Mike responds with a simple breakdown: “A strategy is informed by where you want to take your business in the future—and what creates your future is net new customers.”The conversation then turns to how companies that do customer acquisition well have a different valuation than businesses that don’t do it so well. Damian and Mike each share real-world examples of companies that have different valuations because of how they view customer acquisition.Mike addresses the very important question, “What does success look like when you are doing customer acquisition really well?” with a breakdown of what he calls “signs of life.” If you can identify signs of life, you can avoid stopping a campaign before you should.Finally, Mike and Damian discuss the spectrum of time, effort, and money that should go into new customer acquisition for any size of business.There is a ton of information in this podcast—and it is only Part 1 of 6.What follows is a lightly edited transcript of Episode 7 of the Inevitable Success Podcast with Damian Bergamaschi and special guest Mike Ferranti.TranscriptDamian: Welcome to the Inevitable Success Podcast, sponsored by BuyerGenomics, where our goal is to help you, the marketer, make success inevitable. Each episode will discuss the craft of data-driven marketing, helping you uncover new and profitable ideas. You will also learn what works and what doesn’t work from top marketing professionals and thought leaders. I’m your host Damian Bergamaschi, and inevitable success starts here.To kick this off we are going to have a several-episode discussion about customer acquisition and we’re going to go into a few different topics:What is it? Why is it valuable?In later episodes we’ll go deeper and talk about:What is the real cost of acquiring customers?How do you evaluate the scalability of customer acquisition?We’re also going to think about the quality of the customers that you acquire, how that factors into the equation, and, ultimately, how you calculate the ROI. There are so many different ways to do that.To make it as actionable as possible, the last episode will be how to do it. We will cover the steps required to go out and build a best-in-class customer acquisition program.Mike, a little bit earlier you were telling us a story.