Jul
02
Suppose I told you that you have access to a resource that is more empathetic, more interesting, and more persuasive to potential buyers of your products and services than even your best sales or marketing people. A resource that can do a significant amount of the marketing work that...
read more →
Jul
02
Net Promoter Score (NPS) is perhaps the best known customer loyalty tool around today, based on the entirely sound principle that the more customer promoters you have (i.e., customers who say on surveys that they’re highly likely to refer you to a colleague or friend), the more likely you’ll be to...
read more →
Jul
02
Since Steve Jobs’ resignation as CEO at Apple last week, there has been much concern, discussion, and hand-wringing in the business world. To many, Jobs is a once-in-a-lifetime genius whose success can’t be replicated or continued. On the morning of his announcement, one analyst immediately advised people to sell their Apple...
read more →
Jul
02
Who sells your products or services? This may seem like a silly question, the answer being of course, the sales & marketing team. But increasingly, the most important person selling what you’re offering is — your customer. More specifically, your customer advocates. And, as buyers increasingly expect to learn...
read more →
Jun
08
For companies looking to disrupt an industry—whether as a start-up challenging incumbent “dinosaurs” or a division in an established firm looking to be a disruptor (such as moving into cloud XaaS solutions), Salesforce provides an important—really, the iconic—model. Salesforce is not only the most successful cloud-based business software firm...
read more →
Jun
07
In my experience and client work, companies generally have many more “promoters”—and thus potential references and advocates—than they realize. When Microsoft was first threatened by free software created by passionate open source communities, the firm was pleasantly surprised to find that its own customer community had a solid core of...
read more →
Jun
07
The days when customer advocates primarily took reference calls from buyers and interview requests from the media are long gone. In what we call “advanced practices” (AP) firms[1], they’re using customer advocates at all stages of the customer journey—pre-sale and post-sale. Here’s an example showing how BMC used its...
read more →
Jun
07
In 2015, Finastra (at the time, called Misys)—a global banking software firm based in London—decided to pursue a compelling opportunity: to expand its business within its client banks. The firm seemed quite prosperous, with a client list that included 46 of the 50 largest banks in the world. But it’s...
read more →
Jul
02
Jul
02
The idea that customers can’t or shouldn’t participate much in the innovation process is one barrier to creativity that companies are rapidly knocking down. Many firms are rethinking their businesses, envisioning themselves less as providers of internally-created products and services, and more as platforms that allow customers to create...
read more →
« Previous Page — Next Page »
