You have a high-stakes meeting with a new CXO, or a group of influential stakeholders, or perhaps your boss or boss's boss. You're concerned about the dreaded lack-of-real-interest creeping over their faces, that fatal glance at their smartphones. Here's how to convert such ennui into excitement. In the last issue.... read more →
Jan
21
Jan
13
Have you struggled in 2019 to get support for your customer program(s) from executive stakeholders--such as your new CMO, your boss's boss, C-level customers, etc? Here's a tip to help you grab the support of your dreams in 2020. We'll focus here on stakeholders who are focused on organizational issues... read more →
Oct
22
For years, Austin-based National Instruments has sold its engineering systems and software solutions to mid-level managers. But the highly respected firm (6500 employees, more than $1B in revenue) believed it could provide more strategic solutions for sale to higher-level decision makers. Equally important, so did many of its mid-level buyers.... read more →
Jul
15
The most important thing you can do to accelerate growth is to change the people you hang out with. That’s true for individuals as well as organizations. Every parent knows that if teenagers hang out with sketchy people, it stunts their growth. Hanging out with winners propels their growth.... read more →
Jul
15
Two major business challenges are proving to be quite difficult for businesses: 1) Achieving profitable growth and 2) Transforming the customer experience (CX) in ways that improve business performance. That said, our research is showing dozens of companies having success in both areas by adopting a different mindset and approach,... read more →
Jul
15
Trust and empathy are a must have in today’s economy. Internal, customer-impacting employees—sales, marketing communications, professional services, support services and the like—create hidden friction in the trust building department. It’s hard to find employees who are genuinely empathetic to and trusted by customers—and even when you do, it takes time.... read more →
Jul
15
Cultivating C-Level executives as customer advocates can make your firm. C-Level executives are often highly influential in their industries and have large rolodexes. They can provide you with the most powerful possible introductions to large numbers of other C-Level prospects. Yet in my experience, very few companies develop such... read more →
Jul
02
Following is a conversation between Bill Lee, Founder of the Center for Customer Engagement and author of, The Hidden Wealth of Customers (Harvard Business Review), and Patty Morrison, CIO of Cardinal Health and former CIO of Motorola, GE Industrial Systems, Quaker Oats and Office Depot. The conversation took place... read more →
Jul
02
Getting your customers to advocate and build peer influence in your markets is increasingly critical to business growth. Companies that excel at this—such as Salesforce.com, Amazon, SAS Institute and others—are revolutionizing the customer relationship. They’re creating what I call a Level 4 Customer Value Proposition. In this report, you’ll... read more →
Jul
02
The marketing head of an ambitious technology firm recently shared with me a vexing problem: Apple was one of their customers. But the executive and her team could essentially tell no one. The restrictions that Apple placed on them were that airtight. It’s one of the sweetest moments a... read more →