Ensure Your Customers Are Successful

Here’s a quick question for you. When you sell to your customers, what are you doing to ensure their success? This most likely is targeted to you B2B folks, but it could go to just about anyone selling anything.

Because to the best companies, selling isn’t just about the sale. Or even the [...]

Selling It Back

This past weekend, I heard a co-worker talking to a customer, and she said she didn’t want the customer to sell the product back to her. I hadn’t heard that phrase in several years. But it’s one of those that makes perfect sense.

We sell all sorts of things to all sorts of people. [...]

The Challenge of Segmentation

Segmentation is a difficult thing to wrangle sometimes. When internet-based sales starting picking up steam ten years ago, people weren’t sure how to respond, though the thought process really shouldn’t have been much different than for catalog sales. The main difference is that the catalog was now online and accessible to anyone who [...]

Let Me Shop

I was out shopping (browsing, really) at some shops this weekend. In one of the stores, I was particularly interested in a couple of shirts. As I am checking out one of the shirts, deciding whether to buy, one of the salespeople walks up to me and points me to a table of [...]

Viewing People through Your Own Lens

This is an odd follow up to my post from yesterday. I was commenting to a friend this week about how I found myself looking at people differently, based on the work I was doing. That work essentially gives me a new lens, a new perspective on how people interact and what type [...]

Getting Personal

The Macy’s at Biltmore Fashion Park is huge. The selection is immense. So much so, that it can be overwhelming at times. But they have an answer for that.

This past weekend I shopped by appointment. Marilyn was my guide. She walked me around the men’s department, showing me what was [...]

Categorically Speaking

Marketers love to speak in terms of categories related to their particular brand—premium, super-premium, ultra-premium, giga-premium, you get the picture. From the consumer’s viewpoint, however, brands get considered a bit differently.

Think about the various things you buy (where there is some choice involved). What you actually purchase is based on how it fits [...]

Proper Shelf Sets Exist for a Reason

Over the past week, I have had the occasion to peruse the aisles of both a large grocery and a national home improvement store. In attempting to locate what I needed, I was lost navigating the bizarre organization of the merchandise.

Let me offer some examples. One of the items on my list was [...]

Try a Combination

OK, automakers, try this idea on for size. If you make those large, gas-guzzling SUVs (yeah, I have one, too), offer a small commuter car that gets exceptional gas mileage as an add-on. Not everyone will take advantage of it or appreciate the social consciousness of the move, but for those of us [...]

Wanting and Wanting to Buy

Last Thursday, a story came on NPR’s All Things Considered titled “From Clunker to Cruiser, Ford Posts Quarterly Profit”. One of the interviewees stated that people didn’t want new cars right now. I quickly turned to my wife and said, “That’s not true. People want new cars, they just don’t want to [...]