All too often, we let our business drift away from what really matters... our clients and our customers. How can we tell this has happened and what can we do about it? All parts of a company, even operations, should be oriented to customers. And marketing is the best business tool for understanding customers. I see a lot of smaller businesses struggling with profit. The problem is that there are lots of activities (operations) that are not on what I call the Value Axis. The Value Axis is the straight line from value-added action to the customer. Value-added action always yields the best margins and the easiest sales. Thus, being customer-oriented is being profit-oriented. Conversely, the more activities you're doing that are not customer-oriented are draining away profit from the business. And this goes for all aspects of the business, not just typical delivery activity.