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Don’t make this same mistake in asking for referrals
I received this in my email today: Hi Curtis, We hope you are doing well. We have not received any project from you for long time. Please send us your project. Also we would highly appreciate if you can recommend our service to your friends and colleagues. Kind regards, <name removed> Aaargh! I know that…
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How Vulnerable Are Your Customers?
How many of your customers are being bombarded by your competitors? How many are now seriously considering your competitors’ offers? Last week alone my daughter received more than 20 solicitations from colleges and universities around the country. Some are creative, some are boring, some are promising a great education and others seem to be promising…
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No More Doom & Gloom!
It seems that everywhere you turn, you hear more doom and gloom! Is there any hope? There sure is! This quarter is shaping up to be my best quarter ever, and December is probably going to be my best month ever. A number of my clients initially decided to put things on hold when they…
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“Going Green”-Do Customers Really Care?
Do customers really care about about vendors that go green? Up until today, I’ve never seen anything beyond hype–vendors touting how green they really are in hopes of one-upping their competitors. Everyone has been jumping on a bandwagon, hoping to out-green their competitors. However, I’ve not seen any form of customer research that proves that…
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Why Customer Satisfaction Surveys Can’t Help You Understand Your Customers
I am amazed at how often I run into companies that don’t understand their customers. In my previous post, I discussed the issue of a Fortune 20 company that completely missed the mark in their marketing & sales, and was paying the price in terms of severe downward price pressure, hugely dissatisfied customers, and appalling…
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Why don’t you understand your customers?
The Fortune 20 company I was working with couldn’t understand why a segment of their customers were defecting in droves, and those that stayed were hammering them on price, causing their margins to spiral downwards faster and faster with each quarter’s results. The company had focused their marketing around three primary themes: Inventory control Cost…
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3 Essential Steps to Finding & Keeping the Best Clients…. & How to Cast Off the Worst Ones
I’m excited to announce that I’m launching a new teleseminar series for executive leadership beginning in early March. This series will discuss customer strategy topics for executive leadership including CEOs, CCOs, VPs and GMs and will consist of presentations & interviews with industry luminaries/exemplars. The first one is titled, “3 Essential Steps to Finding &…
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Corporate Christmas Letters Are Worthless
I’m jaded on corporate Christmas / Holiday letters. Too many of them that I receive are preprinted and haven’t even been signed. But even for those that are signed, the cards have a generic message and a scrawl. Even those that are less generic are more “me centric” and have nothing about me. Take this…
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The Power of a Favor
In today’s Wall Street Journal, Jared Sandberg wrote that “simply asking people to fill out a questionnaire in New York’s Penn Station resulted in a 57% compliance. But prefacing that question with the phrase, “Can you do me a favor?” followed by a pause pushed the level of compliance to 84%.” Frank Flynn, the associate…
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How Much Money Are You Burning?
You could employ the most professional and competent sales force in the industry…or employ the most brilliant marketers in the world, but if you are not communicating the value of your products and services in terms of what customers want to hear, you are wasting millions of dollars in marketing, advertising, sales calls, personnel, not…