Today, a lot of attention is being paid to calculating a customers value, and rightly so.

The main question is how much revenue and profitability will come from this person or company over an expected period of time?

The equation is simple: Annual Profit Times Expected Life Equals Total Expected Value.

Useful as the resulting statistic can be in respect to setting marketing and service budgets, it is too simplistic to capture some of the subtler aspects of customer value.

Here is a short list of five other considerations:

(1) Follow The Leader Value: As a consultant, when my client list started to feature names such as Xerox, DuPont, Kraft, and others, it was money in the bank. Other large companies began to be comfortable hiring me because I was pre-screened by their peer group, and smaller companies found the larger names impressive.

(2) Foot In The Door Value: When you land your first client in show business, the rest of the industry feels youre an insider, and doors that were tightly sealed, now become penetrable.

(3) Pride Value: I did a major program for the U.S. Navy as part of an elite team. We trained 18,000 senior managers in 18 months, with extraordinary results. Im very proud of that client, and that project.

(4) Educational Value: We learn from our customers, and some have great lessons to teach us. Ive been able to work with some of the best people in sales and customer service, and I think their contribution to my thinking shows.

(5) Altruistic Value: If youre helping your alma mater to raise funds for an important purpose, youre doing something good, and perhaps even noble. You dont expect your entire reward to be denominated in dollars.

So, the next time youre pursuing a client, or youre calculating the cost of keeping one, consider this short list.

It may give you greater insight into a how much a customer is really worth.