Are you starting a new business? Building a brand? Seeking to turn around a declining brand? Then innovate. Steve Jobs once said, “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” Innovation is what makes you, your culture, your value proposition, your products and services, your customer experience and everything else about your brand unique. It’sRead… Read more »
Is your brand using social media to tell its story? If not, you may be missing out on one of the best opportunities for interacting with your customers and prospects. Unlike traditional media, the conversational nature of social media can help your brand foster stronger and more personal relationships. Relationships that lead to higher levelsRead… Read more »
When most of us choose one brand over another, we do so with an expectation. An expectation that the product or service will fulfill a promise made by the brand. What happens, though, when the promise isn’t kept? This is where the resolution portion of your brand’s customer experience can help. Brands that provide disappointedRead… Read more »
Article Summary: Imagine you have spent the day interviewing. You met senior leaders from every department. Your last interview is with Donald, the CEO. He graciously welcomes you into his office and offers you a seat in a comfortable-looking chair. Donald smiles and starts the same way everyone else did…“Tell me about yourself.” Will yourRead… Read more »
What if you could gather hundreds of your targeted prospects and customers in one place on a single night? What if you had a shared interest in something that would bring them together? How would you use that to build a loyal community of customers? On Saturday night, Pacers Running Stores gathered over 1800 runnersRead… Read more »
A picture really does tell the story of a thousand words. The real question, though, is from whose perspective? Depending on the storyteller, the same picture can be used to tell different stories. Consider the picture above. It appeared on Instagram recently and was posted by a college graduate on the morning of her commencement.Read… Read more »
Let’s pretend for a moment you’re in the business of selling transportation to college students. What, do you suppose, is most important to them: price, time, convenience, comfort or safety? After you conduct your market research, you determine what matters most to your target audience is time. So you develop a value proposition and serviceRead… Read more »
The phrase, fun and work, doesn’t have to be an oxymoron. Just ask any of the employees who work for the area companies recently named among the Washington Business Journal’s Best Places to Work for 2013. For the ninth year in a row, the Washington Business Journal has compiled its list of the best DCRead… Read more »
Nobel Laureate and Physicist Kenneth G. Wilson once said “the hardest problems of pure and applied science can only be solved by the open collaboration of the world-wide scientific community.” If you’re like me and think there is an element of science (as well as art) to business, then I suppose the same can beRead… Read more »
This week, for the second year in a row, I am volunteering as a contractor and will be joining several hundred youth and adults from my faith-based community to perform home improvement work in the homes of needy people living in an economically depressed area. The 140 or so projects we will complete include painting,Read… Read more »