High Tech Strategies > Predictable Results for Clients

Customers and Results

Case Studies That Demonstrate Predictable Results

The Customer Alignment Lifecycle™ (CAL) is a market strategy development process that provides predictable results. CAL was created by High Tech Strategies’ founder Warren Schirtzinger. The framework is built around Schirtzinger’s finding that the adoption rate of new products and innovations is governed by the customer’s perception of and willingness to accept risk. Since 1989, Schirtzinger and his colleagues have partnered with dozens of global, market-leading companies to refine the customer-alignment lifecycle into a proven, customer-centric and repeatable process…..that delivers phenomenal success the first time and every time.

The CAL process builds on the predictable sequence of the technology adoption lifecycle, making innovation and new-product success predictable. CAL starts with a deep understanding of customer characteristics and motivations, including the criteria customers use to evaluate competing products and services. These criteria — based on an overriding need to reduce risk — form the basis of new-product acceptance. By knowing how customers perceive and avoid risk, companies are able to align the actions of marketing, sales, communications, and product management with these requirements and systematically create predictable results.

Success stories from eight different industries are described in detail below. This page also offers foundational insights into the CAL methodology and related processes.

The first application of this framework was initiated in mid-1986 at Measurex Corporation, now a division of Honeywell. The challenge was to re-energize Measurex’ sensor-based process control business. Schirtzinger led the effort to analyze the elements of perceived risk and business misalignment that prevented many customers from buying. The customers’ core motivational characteristics were uncovered and analyzed. Using the concepts of lowering perceived risk and aligning with customer motivations, one new product and an updated selling methodology were introduced. By the end of 1987, European sales had increased by 107% in one year and worldwide unit orders had increased by 79%.

Measurex is one of hundreds of examples of predictable results that have been achieved using the Customer Alignment Lifecycle (CAL) framework.