Blog
Customer Retention: The Great Lost Opportunity
We spend much more time and money and effort on attaining new customers than on retaining the ones we have already. It’s true that companies in all industries including ours are structured around customer acquisition rather than retention. In his new book, Never Lose a Customer Again: Turn any sale into a lifetime of loyalty in less than 110 days, […]
Setting Goals That Work!
The best way to accomplish anything significant is to set goals. Look, I know all those jokes about New Year’s resolutions and how they last about as long as a snowball in Tucson in August, but then again, goals are critical to getting anything done in life. I am one of those people who sets goals, not just annually, but […]
Hiring Advice For 2021
As the world comes back to life, we’re all going to have to find more people for our companies. Finding, and hiring the right people has become a critical issue for most of the companies in our industry. I know of some companies that have recs open for twenty to thirty jobs! And they are not having much luck finding […]
2021: “Let’s Hope It’s a Good One Without Any Fear” – John Lennon
Yes, I have been accused of being an optimist. Sometimes I have even been called a “Rose-Colored Glasses” optimist, which to my pessimistic accountant and banker friends is just about the cruelest insult they think they can launch at me. But then I just laugh them off and put my Rose-Colored Glasses back on. Okay 2020 has been a […]
Adaptability Is The Key
One of the most interesting things I have learned during the past ten months is that people are actually doing better work by not physically going to work. Now, don’t get me wrong, there is ultimately no substitute for being at work, but then again, many people have found that they could be much more productive on their own time. […]
Why Market To Our Own Customers?
One of the things that always seems to come up when we are working with a company, especially when we are sending out their newsletters is this, “We want new customers, so why are we sending the newsletter out to our current customers? We have their business already.” This is one of the most serious misconceptions you can have. In […]
Trains, Planes, and Automobiles
As we do every year on the Wednesday evening before Thanksgiving we watch the old classic Trains, Planes and Automobiles starring Steve Martin and John Candy, and just like we do every year we all end up shouting suggestions at the characters, ideas for making better choices. This movie came out in the late eighties, and it is stunning […]
Words Of Wisdom From Bezos
There is no mistaking the fact that Jeff Bezos is a pretty smart guy. He saw things years before the rest of us did. Many of us sat by and laughed as his company lost money year after year while he invested in the future. In fact, that is one of his many premises: “The past is over, today is […]
Here We Go Again: How To Handle Pandemic Shut Down Round Two
“Just when I thought I was out; they pull me back in” Michael Corleone For a number of reasons, which I will not get into here, we are entering the second round of shutdowns, and this one promises to be more severe than the last time. This situation is leading to more frustration than ever before. Many people I […]
It’s The Small Things
The great companies always pay attention to detail. I have read numerous times that Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ives would spend hours working on the boxes their products came in. They would hold the cover of an I-Pod box over the bottom of the box and just drop it seeing how long and how elegantly the top of the box […]
