As you grow your business, you must continually reach the next level that gets you one step closer to your long-term goals.
In today’s world, you are in a contest for both customers and talent. Your business operates in an environment where customers essentially have limitless purchase choices and employees essentially have the benefits of a full employment economy. How do you compete with other employers to attract and retain talent that’s right for your business? Executives […]
As a leader in your company, are you the person who pulls out a toolbox to fix the office copier or adjust a piece of equipment on your plant floor? When an order needs to be shipped to a customer, are you the one who packs the box? Let’s hope not. Your job requires you […]
The Rules for Selling with a PowerPoint Deck When I told one of my team members the title for this article, her answer was, “That’s a simple one for you to write. You’ll just say, ‘Don’t, don’t and don’t.’” Yes, it’s true, a PowerPoint deck is one of the best tools available if you want […]
How to Help Your Team Deliver Compelling Customer Experiences What is the single biggest driver of a compelling customer experience? Is it your product’s performance? Is it your customer service? Is it your social media presence? It’s none of the above. The single biggest driver of a compelling customer experience is how well your employees […]
Customer satisfaction… seems pretty obvious what it is and why it matters, right? I don’t think so. When I hear people talk about customer satisfaction, they often talk about meaningless concepts such as “meeting customers’ expectations,” which is a pretty low bar, when you consider what your competitors might be doing for customers. Or, I […]
Enjoy a Successful 2018 by Planning Backwards If you want to have a successful year, don’t start out by focusing on what you want to do in January. Instead, determine where you want to be next December. Businesses often confuse movement with progress. Every day, billions of work hours are wasted on movement that is […]
If you’ve studied linguistics, you’ve learned that the study is not about prescribing how people speak but describing what actually happens when people use a language. At any point in time, a language works according to a shared set of understood rules, which change over time as a language evolves. Linguists seek to understand this, […]
Marketing is for Humans The subject line caught my eye, promising a free download on “The State of Marketing,” so I opened the email from salesforce.com. I started reading the report, and, at first, I liked what I read. It said that successful companies are more likely to have their marketing departments focus on customer […]
Two Tips for Your Next Presentation Everyone who subscribes to this newsletter – and I mean everyone – has to give presentations from time to time as part of their job. Here are two tips to help you give better presentations: Don’t “give” presentations Don’t “present” Huh? Seems counterintuitive? Sure it does. But it’s valuable […]
Your Most Powerful Competitive Advantage We tend to think that our competitive advantages are based on our products’ performance, or our low costs of production. Sure, these are important, but they are not your biggest sources of competitive advantage. Your biggest source of competitive advantage: Knowledge of your customers Consider what happens if you know […]