Ok, I thought I would offer an anecdote from earlier this week. One of our customers has an unrefined sales rep who works hard but lacks many skills. He had a customer make a design change to a part that was going to cause an 18% increase in the price of the salesperson’s service. His call to the customer to announce this news: “Hello customer, how are you today? Wait, I shouldn’t ask you that until I tell you that our price is going to increase 18%. I am sure our competitor will be able to be well under that price if you have them quote it. Now how are… Read More
Continue ReadingActivist Shareholders…
are two words you don’t want to hear if you are CEO of a publicly-traded company. From Inc.com: At public companies, this [turnover] is reflected in the rise of activist shareholders, Jacovitz said, seen most recently in the public ousting of top executives at Hewlett-Packard. I think there may be one other slightly significant item that had an impact on the HP ouster. The article focuses on C-level turnover, which is on the rise. But I found these graphs towards the end of the article to be more notable: Meanwhile at the lower rungs of the workforce, small employers are having trouble finding qualified workers, according to the National Federation… Read More
Continue ReadingCue Up
According to Inc.com, if you live in Baltimore, you spend more time in line than any other major metropolitan city. With an average wait time of 5 minutes, 13 seconds, Baltimore ranked last in the comparison of customer service speed in the 25 most-populous U.S. cities. I suppose what really matters is what you are waiting for. Personally, I would wait 10 times that long for crab cakes in that town. Now for the coup d’gras: Phoenix had the shortest average wait for service at 3 minutes, 5 seconds. Residents of Portland, Ore., finished second, with an average wait time of 3 minutes, 30 seconds, and Minneapolis came in at… Read More
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