Why a broken Sony strengthens the brand. I’ve known plenty of people that called themselves ‘Sony men’. That is to say, they bought in to the brand in a big way, particularly years ago. They’d only buy Sony hi-fi gear or their TV had to be a Sony. Personally, I’ve never considered myself a Sony [...]

Watching Property Ladder last night (a show about buying and developing property, if you don’t know it), I was dumbfounded (as was the host) by the developer of a £650k house adding a double garage door to the front of the property, despite the fact that the area wasn’t large enough to get a car [...]

Dr Steven Covey calls it ‘start with the end in mind’, in his recent post Seth Godin suggests it as ‘follow through’. The lesson for both is the same: Work with your customers in the knowledge of the end result. If your end result is a quick sale and no repeat orders, where is the [...]

If you merely value a customer on turnover and profit alone, you’re missing a big chunk of capital. I love this recent post at Dawud Miracle’s blog which describes seven ways to make your customer fall in love with you. Dawud suggests that ‘when you’re in love, you can’t help telling people about it: Be [...]

CRM was supposed to help businesses better understand their customers and increase efficiency. Yet most companies are not getting the return they expected. Why the purchase of software or hardware (which can sometimes cost millions to the company) that enable a company to capture informations and details about individual customers that can be used for [...]

Today, a colleague gave me great example of when expectations don’t appear to matter. He’s currently going through the painful process of selling/buying a home and has had to engage with different agents to view properties and so forth. He reported a concerning trend: agents appear to be over-valuing properties to get the instruction. Once [...]

Managing expectations correctly can be a full time job. Seth Godin recently posted on his blog that most of the time, you’re challenged with this: high expectations that must be beat. Over the years, I’ve worked with people that habitually over-promised and under-delivered. It’s a tough place to be and usually only ends in disappointment, [...]