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It's the season of presidential politics, so I thought I'd jump in. It's become conventional wisdom to decry negative campaigning -- it's right up there with excessive CEO pay and declining public schools. Yesterday's Seth Godin: "The reliance on negative stories in politics makes me sick. I think we should... read more →

CAB EXCHANGE Summit July 21-23 San Jose, CA http://www.cabexchange.com/event/ For professionals who run Customer Advisory Boards, Executive Summits or similar structured customer collaboration meetings. You'll hear presentations from CAB programs at Wells Fargo, Intel, Interwoven, Cisco, Adobe, SAS, iCrossing, and other respected firms, get results from the first comprehensive survey... read more →

One key to winning the cooperation of sales in running your Customer Reference Program is to provide real value. And doing that requires knowing what sales needs. To keep on top of this, regular surveys should be a part of your process. Here are some tips for productively surveying sales,... read more →

Mike is the Customer Advisory Board (CAB) Practice leader at KickStart Alliance, author of Marketing Campaign Development a consultant to senior marketing executives, and an expert on meeting facilitation, having facilitated hundreds of CAB and other executive sessions over the last 20 years. Mike will be leading the Peer Exchange... read more →

Sean Geehan, Founder of Geehan Advisory Boards, will be leading a panel at this year's CAB Exchange Summit. Sean is an important thought leader with Customer Advisory Boards (CABs), particularly with senior marketing executives. He has presented to the CMO Council, The Conference Board, the American Marketing Association and other... read more →

Early Registration continues through June 13 for the 2008 CAB Exchange Summit. This years event will be held July 22-23 at the beautiful Hayes Mansion in San Jose, CA. Top CAB professionals from top programs around the world will gather for networking, idea exchange and relationship building and will include... read more →

Just got back from an intense 2+ days at our Spring 2007 Forum in Berkeley (with a bit of a detour to southern CA for a little beach time). Below are some of my more optimistic takeaways from the Forum. Also, here are Jeremiah’s. And here are Steve Ellis’s (on... read more →

Stephanie Porter is the Director, Customer Programs at Amdocs. What's interesting about Stef is that she has a considerable background in sales and sales management, as do the members of her team. She brings that sensibility -- consultative sales -- to her reference program, and it makes a big difference... read more →

Since 2001, Ben McConnell has been researching the effects of word of mouth on customer loyalty. Forbes calls his work (along with partner Jackie Huba) in this field "the word of mouth gospel." In his newest book, Citizen Marketers, Ben and Jackie examine the social media explosion: the ever-growing communities... read more →

Marketing evangelist Mariio Sundar publishes a popular blog called Marketing Nirvana and like Jeremiah (below), he is helping raise the profile of refeence programs. Mario works with a Bay Area marketing agency and is on the board of the American Marketing Association's Silicon Valley Chapter. Recenly he posed 5 questions... read more →