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Jul 02

Turn a C-level Customer Into Your Most Valuable Reference

In any industry, selling to a C-level executive buyer is often a cause for celebration. Senior executive customers tend to have larger budgets, are less price sensitive and more focused on value. But closing the sale is no time to relax. That’s when the real work — the real... read more →

Jul 02

5 Things Customers Can Do Better Than You

Many firms assume that customers can do just one thing of real significance: buy their products and services. It’s time to seriously challenge that assumption, as many companies are doing by looking to customers to fuel their growth engines. Facebook, for example, has close to 1 billion customers who... read more →

Jun 07

The Beachhead Strategy: How HP Enterprise Went from Vendor to Trusted Advisor

For especially complex initiatives that require substantial organization changes—such as this one—an excellent option is to consider a beachhead approach. One indication of its effectiveness comes from a surprising source: Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HP Enterprise) during its last two years under CEO Carly Fiorina. The firm was riddled with serious conflicts... read more →

Mar 03

Why You Need to Attend the 2017 Summit on Customer Engagement

The Summit on Customer Engagement is the longest running, most respected conference in the world on customer advocacy and engagement. For professionals who run customer advocacy, customer reference, customer communities, customer advisory boards and related customer engagement programs, it’s the finest learning and network building experience you’ll find. [bctt tweet="Watch this... read more →

Feb 28

How to Engage Marquee Customers in Seriously Good Advocacy

I’ve worked with more than a few firms who are bold about winning marquee customers, yet remarkably bashful about engaging them in advocacy. On the other hand, many firms regard pursuing marquee customer advocacy as a chimera—it’s too hard. Objections include: Marquee brands have ironclad policies against endorsements. Marquees are... read more →

Feb 21

What Marquee Customers Will Do: Think BIG

In my last post, we saw that many firms badly misconstrue what marquee customers are, and miss out on the tremendous leverage they can exert on the growth of their business. Marquee customers can create a much larger impact than many companies think. We’ll show how by looking not just at... read more →

Feb 14

Time to Get Serious About Marquee Customers

About a decade ago, former McKinsey consultant David G. Thompson conducted important research on how the fastest growth businesses are built. That is businesses that get to $1B in revenue faster than their competitors do (if they’re competitors make that number at all). One of the key drivers for the fast... read more →

Feb 07

Actively Including Your Customers

In my last article, we saw how a Total Customer Experience (TCE) approach to business operations is critical if you want to get serious about delivering a successful customer experience. Legacy business operations tend to be too siloed, and too focused on business objectives to the exclusion of customer needs.... read more →

Jan 31

Creating a Total Customer Experience (TCE)

In my last post, we looked at where legacy business operations go wrong. The very names—marketing, sales, product management, professional services, support services, and even “business operations” itself—suggest an inward business orientation. The objectives that most firms pursue are clearly misaligned with customer needs throughout the customer journey. For example,... read more →

Jan 24

Where Business Goes Wrong With Empowered Customers

In reimagining how a business should operate to win today’s “empowered customer,” my last blog post posed a thought experiment: suppose the organization was run by your most desirable customers. No, they don’t want to spend their days running your operations. But there are certain high-value outcomes from your business... read more →

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