Books and Articles
Pain Killer Marketing
Released in April, 2008, a new book entitled Pain Killer Marketing by Chris Stiehl of StiehlWorks and Henry DeVries of the New Client Marketing Institute. The book presents the ways that Fortune 500 companies such as Cisco Systems and Palm collect and use customer data in designing their products and services. The book achievd "Best Seller" status on Barnes&Noble.com in late March, prior to its release. The forward is by noted guru Guy Kawasaki. The book has received great reviews on Amazon.com and Barnes&Noble.com.
Articles
May, 2009: The Best Executives Listen
The Best Executives learn how to listen to customers, to employees and to experts. This article discusses how executives can learn to execute Active Listening and benefit in their careers.
December, 2008: Treat Your Salespeople Like Customers!
Your salespeople need to have access to a lot of key information to be able to sell. Shouldn't you treat them at least as well as you treat your customers? In this article, examples are discussed of companies that do this well and reap the sales success that results. http://biznik.com/articles/treat-your-sales-people-like-customers
How Cadillac Cows Inspired a Marketing Guru
The leather used to upholster the U.S. standard luxury car, the Cadillac, had just received sub-par reviews in a survey by JD Powers, despite the fact that GM was taking painful steps to use the best leather in the market. Execs at GM were puzzled; the brand had the most expensive leather among its competitors and “Cadillac cows” were distinguished by not having any scratches, fly bites, neck wrinkles or other so-called imperfections that plague heifers destined to become automotive interiors. Read This Article
September, 2008: Don't Pin Your Salespeople to Unprofitable Deals...
If you only measure your salespeople by dollars sold or some other volume metric, you may be missing some very profitable deals. This article describes how to measure salespeople in terms of the customer loyalty that they create and how trusted they are. http://www.customerthink.com/article/dont_pin_salespeople_traditional_metrics
July 21, 2008: Justin Petruccelli: Adventure Capital: These Entrepreneurs Found Creative Ways to Invest in Themselves - and the Dividends Are Piling Up!
Interesting stories of how businesses got started, including StiehlWorks. http://www.entrepreneur.com/startingabusiness/successstories/article195800.htmlApril 7, 2008: When It Comes To Customer Experience, Saturn Runs Circles Around the Competition
A few years ago, when I worked at Cadillac, we studied the customer-buying experience in great detail. Our customers talked about how uncomfortable they were when buying a car. Read This Article
March 17, 2008: Manage Key Accounts as If They Were Key!
The idea behind singling out key accounts is that you will treat them as special, giving them the recognition and treatment they deserve. If the age-old "80/20" rule applies, 20 percent of your... Read This Article
February 18, 2008: Make Sure Your Entire Organization Is on the Same Path
Company XYZ (a real company, whose name I'm withholding) has an extensive toll-free customer service program. The company makes a technical product, and its 125 major customers can lose a lot of... Read This Article
December 10, 2007: Start a Trend: Treat Your Sales Staff Like Customers
Have you ever thought of your sales staff as customers? Henry Ford thought of his employees as customers for his cars. He wanted to pay them enough and charge the buyers so little that his employees... Read This Article
May 25, 2007: Does Higher Customer Satisfaction Mean More Sales?
Does Higher Customer Satisfaction Necessarily Mean More Sales? In brief, the answer is “No!” – you must do more than merely drive customer satisfaction scores up. As an illustration, consider... Read This Article
September 20, 2004: Find Out What the Customer Wants, First
In the early 1990s, while working on the new car designs at Cadillac Motor Car Co., I found that our customers had a different reaction to scratches and wrinkles in the leather than we did. We had... Read This Article