Marketing Spoonful

I had the pleasure of attending the Rural Grocery Store Summit in Manhattan, Kansas, this week. I met a lot of great people who are doing their best to preserve an important part of the struggling rural environment.
I learned that over the past five years, nearly half the rural grocery stores in Kansas have gone [...]

Tags: community engagement, customer engagement, food marketing blog, rural grocery store

I had the pleasure of taking a ride with my mom to the airport in Kansas City tonight to pick up my dad. He was coming home from a trip to New Orleans.
On our way there, we had a chance to talk about a recent speech I had given on the power of great customer [...]

Tags: Customer Service, customer service horror story, food marketing blog, lifetime customer value, mom, Panera

If your business offering is so completely unique that very few other competitors will be you to the punch, you might be able to put off returning calls to potential customers. But that doesn’t make it a wise policy.
Stay with me for a minute while I set up the story.
So there I am. Sleeping in [...]

Tags: Customer Service, food marketing blog, prospecting, return calls, sales tips, snakes in the basement

My friend John Madden sent me the following quote this morning:
Without involvement, there is no commitment. Mark it down, asterisk it, circle it, underline it. No involvement, no commitment … Stephen Covey
It reminded me of a recent post in which I extolled the virtues of engagement.
Engagement leads to involvement and involvement leads to commitment. I [...]

Tags: analytical, commitment, emotion, engagement, involvement, personality types

Recently we talked about the power of consultant-client collaboration.
Here’s what happens when things go horribly wrong:
http://chewingthecudweekly.blogspot.com/2009/06/vendor-client-relationshipin-real-world.html

Tags: negotiation, something for nothing

Maverick Creative Group recently commissioned a survey to determine clients’ attitudes about consultants. The survey was developed by Maverick Creative Group and administered by surveydepartment.com in conjunction with Clear Voice.
We talked to 100 businesses with less than $10 million in revenue that have been in business less than 10 years. We asked them about consultants [...]

Tags: client service, consulting, customer experience

I love Saturdays. There is nothing better than getting my chores done in time to sit down and watch one of my favorite teams play basketball against one of its rivals. Today, as I watched my beloved Jayhawks square off against Okie State at Allen Field House I got to thinking about all the wonderful [...]

Tags: blog, employee engagement, Food, Marketing, product demo, Promotion, Supermarket

Recent cutbacks at Web pioneers, such as Google and Digg remind us that it’s not enough to be wildly and successfully innovative. In today’s economy, like perhaps none other in history, you have to run lean. The news of a 10-percent workforce reduction at Digg is especially poignant since the social media site has been busy [...]

Tags: Customer Service, Digg, economic downturn, free ways to grow your brand, Google

We’re entering territory we haven’t seen in some time, with restaurant trips down and customer satisfaction seemingly more important than ever.
So tonight, I’m watching the movie No Reservations, in which Catherine Zeta-Jones plays a neurotic chef named Kate. In one scene, a patron at the restaurant where Kate works complains that the foie gras is [...]

Tags: blog, Customer Service, economic downturn, Food, Marketing, Restaurant

One of my favorite memories of growing up in the Kansas City area in the 1970s and 1980s was our bi-weekly grocery shopping outing. When that second Friday rolled around, I always knew two things: We’d go out to eat someplace nice like Red Lobster or Pizza Shoppe, and we’d make at least three stops [...]

Tags: blog, childhood memories, Food, grocery shopping, Marketing