In September of 1960, J.F. Kennedy engaged Richard Nixon in the first presidential candidates’ debate. Kennedy’s opening statement in that debate has now become the famous “I am not satisfied” speech. What Kennedy’s team rightly strategized was that in any competitive environment, political or businesses, sustainable success starts with focusing on your own house. You will not win the race by focusing on the competition. There are a number of reasons for this…

It’s widely accepted that customer service is probably the most important way for any business to differentiate itself in what is now a global, commoditized and hyper-competitive business world. When competitors can replicate your products or services, and undercut your pricing, about the only thing they cannot do as quickly is to reproduce the image you…

You’ve got to respect an article that starts off like this: I’m not a sales person – and I don’t play one on TV. So, in case you’re wondering what qualifies a technology guy like me to offer advice on sales, my only response is this: The fact that I’m not a sales…

Early yesterday morning, I used the time I had waiting for an inter-island flight to purge old documents from the hard drive of my laptop. I came across a lesson plan I had done with my retail team a few years back on customer service, detailing what we noticed to be the six basic needs…

Unhappy customers are bad news for any company, and it only takes one of them to shatter a perfectly good day at work for everyone. It only takes one of them to steer many more prospective customers away from you. Unhappy customers have their reasons. Some don’t feel well, some have unrealistic expectations, and…

Through most of my corporate work career I’ve been associated with the “hospitality industry:” hotels and resorts and all the amenities they are made of, e.g. restaurants, retail and recreational outlets and the like. The hospitality industry is a labor-intensive one, where the majority of employees do come face-to-face with the customer. Within it, nearly…

Before you decide the Pareto Principle is true and can be used to guide your actions, I want to ask two important questions. Can you identify which actions make up the useful 20%? And can you do so in advance? And does this useful 20% always contain more or less the same actions?

With any business or type of work – you have to deal with customers directly or indirectly. Focusing on customer relationship and make sure your products and services are working for them goes long ways to keep your job around. Pat Matson Knapp has written an article on Joe Grant’s “Top 10 List of Client…

Management covers a lot of ground. Managing with Aloha covers nineteen universal business values, and thus that number, nineteen, is just the beginning when it comes to the different topics people will ask me to speak on. Still, preferences fall along certain lines at any given time, and there are runaway winners when it comes…