People are more comfortable with the familiar. It takes selling a big dream that comes with excellent income possibility to get someone to leave his or her comfort zone.

Marketing is not the art of finding clever ways to dispose of what you make. It is the art of creating genuine customer value.

My primary early interest was in marketing and my aim was to improve its theories, methods and tools. Early on I pressed companies to adopt a consumer orientation and to be in the value creation business. I didn't pay much attention to the social responsibilities of business until later. Now I am pressing companies to address the triple bottom line: people, the planet, and profits. I found that companies were too much into short term profit maximization and they needed to invest more in sustainability thinking.

Thomas Edison had great visions (for lights, music players, movies, etc.) but he knew they didn't count until he could make them work. His statement that creativity is 99% perspiration makes that point. Consider how much time he spent trying to make a synthetic rubber material for tires and never stopped trying but he never succeeded.

Every business is a service business. Does your service put a smile on the customer's face?

The best way to hold customers is to constantly figure out how to give them more for less.

Good customers are an asset which, when wellmanaged and served, will return a handsome lifetime income stream for the company.