Would you have your wedding at Starbucks? Becoming a Beloved Brand
So would you? Would you have your wedding at Starbucks? How about your reception? Lets switch venues, how about at Taco Bell or Subway? While I have never heard of a Taco Bell reception, I have been tracking the phenomena of Starbucks weddings and receptions since I worked on my first book about the company…
Holiday Relationships – Focusing on More than the Sale
We are in the throes of the frenzied shopping season, so it seems timely that we remind ourselves of several truths about why we should focus more on customer relationships and less on sales: People want to be viewed as important and unique. (Jumping into a sales process without taking the time to understand the…
Segment Your Service Experiences!
Customers aren’t always right and they certainly aren’t equal, but…customers are always paying the bills! I am stuck by two groups of business leaders – those who treat customers as an after thought to profits or products and those that treat every customer equally. I have always ascribed to Peter Drucker’s adage that we are…
Blessed are the Peacemakers. They will Experience Business Success!
Leadership guru Brian Tracy has been kind enough to endorse a number of my books and I have looked to him for wisdom throughout the years. One of my favorite quotes of Brian’s is “Set peace of mind as your highest goal, and organize your life around it.” The older I get the more value…
Walk A Mile In Their Shoes – Mapping Your Customers’ Journey
Sometimes we are too close to something – a process, an idea, a product or service – to see it with true, objective clarity and perspective. This can be especially (and paradoxically) true when a notion is born from our own brains. We think we know what it looks, smells and feels like to be…
Mystery, Sensuality and Intimacy – Loving your Customer and your Message
Here’s an exercise for you. Try to go one day without seeing an advertising message. Ok, how about an hour? Some subtle, others overt, marketers are finding us in as unsuspecting of places as the bottom of golf holes. Every business is talking at customers. But what makes that chatter banal or brilliant? For a…
Beloved Brands Think Differently
Working remotely, I am sitting in a Starbucks with my laptop. (As you may have surmised, I’ve been having a substantive long-term relationship with the brand.) Across the way, a woman was also working away on her computer when…it happened. A keystroke run amok sends her beverage sailing across the table and onto the floor,…
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The Starbucks Experience: Leadership Tips eBook
Elevating Care in Healthcare: Lessons from the UCLA Health System eBook
