Michael J. Silverstein Quotes
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Take an expansive view of the consumers needs and expand beyond your current boundaries.
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All great companies have spirit and culture. Mean spirited returns mean spirit.
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Epidemics of "bad" voice can kill your reputation overnight.
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The starting point is to create a qualitative understanding of market drivers. You need to get into the head of the consumer and be able to tell her story. It is both art and science. The purpose of the market map is to define dissatisfactions, hopes, dreams and fears. Winning solutions respond to the distinct and specific needs of a group of consumers.
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Too many companies are happy to have workers to dread working. They have the wrong attitude because they have the wrong leadership.
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Functional goods sold en masse earn a good return but breakthrough profits come from satisfying emotional needs.
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A curious mind armed with skill, experience, knowledge, and patterns can give birth to big brand revolution.
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The Golden Rule works. It really does. Treat people the way you want to be treated. Kindness begets kindness.
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I believe in classic ideas. They are timeless. They are forever. There are many fads in management.
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Don't ask your customers what they want. This rule is based on the view that they probably don't know. You have to fully understand them, the context for their needs and their major dissatisfactions.
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Deliver infinite growth having your customers talk about you, exclaim you and tell their friends and colleagues about you.
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Consumers are time constrained, budget restricted and less loved than they would like. Give them a wonderful experience and they will share it. Capture their soul and win big time.
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Transform your employees into passionate disciples. Teach. Create apostles. Give people a calling, not a job.
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People underestimate the power of the Internet. For some consumers, it is the source of all information. Younger adults are on their phones more than they watch television. They don't read newspapers. It is their real world. It is not a set of virtual lenses.
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I admire many entrepreneurs. They bring energy, excitement, youthful enthusiasm. What they lack in process, they make up for in gumption.
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The truth is that business is simple: create great products, merchandise them at the point of sale, continuously innovate and surprise, reward and achieve a position of loyalty with your front line, and seek new truth from the market. Deliver the goods at a competitive cost. Price to earn a decent but not competitively inviting return. Not much else matters.
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You make money when you get visitors to go through the entrance at capacity.
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Respond to your customer's dissatisfactions with precision and power.
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Always welcome your customer's scorn. This rule says read the complaint letters. Categorize them. Decide how you are going to wipe them out.
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Truth is so difficult to hear about. It must be experienced.
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If you innovate broadly, focus on the customer experience, and deliver everyday a great product, you will gain share.
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Own one idea. Complete it. Map the current model of purchase and usage. Change how it is done so at least some part of the market uses only your product. Extend from that core user to a much broader universe. Describe your concept in a very short, "six-word story" - a la Ernest Hemingway: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."
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Define a winning proposition that is consumer right and delivers margin accretion.
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The choices we make define our future.
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All companies have many opportunities. Strategy is about allocation of resources and priorities.
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A lot of people believe you only need a vision. This is simply not correct. You need brilliant execution every day. It's about attention to all the details of go to market.
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Failure to make the tough but necessary choices means slow painful death.
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I like to take CEOs into consumers' homes to see the "real world." CEOs have privileged lives with big incomes, lots of help, access to just about anything they wish. The average consumer lives on $53,000 a year and has daily tradeoffs and compromises that must be made. I took a CEO into a trailer park so he could observe first-hand - and understand - how consumers use his product.
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Curiosity is the greatest source of ideas, retail revolutions, and insights.
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Better ramp up your virtual relationships. Companies think omni channel is the correct answer. This is not enough. The information explosion for consumers makes 24/7 and full and complete engagement possible.
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