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A Bit of Humor
I found this picture hilarious. It is interesting that people are taking pictures of the ad—it got people’s attention! It has little to do with anything we’ve talked about here, but I hope you enjoy it anyway.
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An Extraordinarily Deep Customer Understanding
It isn’t too hard to find out what customers need, want, and are willing to pay for. In fact, it is quite the opposite. Customers are demanding to be heard. If you search the web for aberrations of many company’s names you’ll invariably find sites that customers have set up to voice their opinions (ie. […]
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Innovation Doesn’t Come From the Top. Or the Bottom. It Comes From Your Customers
I was reading this week a brilliant essay by Dave Pollard entitled, “A prescription for business innovation: Creating technologies that solve basic human needs.” Pollard writes, Innovation Starts with the Customer: If successful innovations must address an urgent human need, then the front-end of the innovation process should be situated at the point of contact […]
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Customer Purchase Drivers: The Most Critical Factor in Driving Sales and Profits
Recently, I have worked with several Fortune 500 companies to help them determine what drives customers to purchase their products or services. My focus for these companies was specifically on uncovering their particular Customer Purchase Drivers–what inherent quality their product or service possesses that makes customers really want to purchase them. These drivers are the […]
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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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Case Study: How a Small Business Software Company Discovered $16M In Hidden Profits
A software company that provides financial software to small businesses had introduced a new add-on product to the market but despite spending huge amounts of money on advertising, hadn’t been able to penetrate their existing customer base let alone reach new customers. Prospects were complaining that the new product was too expensive or not that […]
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It’s Getting Harder to Acquire & Retain Profitable Customers
More so than ever before, today’s CEOs are faced with increased competition and customers who are very savvy and can be highly demanding, which allows them to be more selective in their purchases of products and services. The result is that it’s getting harder and harder to acquire and retain profitable customers. Now, more than […]
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The Chief Customer Officer as Chief Butt-Kicker
Louis Columbus wrote a blog post entitled, “Chief Customer Officers: Only Ass-Kickers Need Apply” While I love his characterization of the The Chief Customer Officer as Chief A*%-Kicker, in my experience, that is (or should be) the role of the CEO. The Chief Customer Officer needs to focus on four things to be successful: 1.) […]
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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 […]