Stop, Look, & Listen: The Customer CEO Business Fable About How to Profit from the Power of Your Customers
By Chuck Wall
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About this ebook
Stop, Look, and Listen is the story of how Bob puts the principles put forth in Chuck Wall’s Customer CEO: How to Profit from the Power of Your Customers to work. Bob has been running his company as if he controls the customers. Bob is urged to Stop, Look, and Listen, because today, the customers are in control. They are the bosses, the Customer CEOs, and they control the company’s destiny.
Bob must learn to understand his customers’ needs, and more importantly, embrace their power. The three essential steps are to STOP seeing things from the corporate CEO’s point of view, LOOK at everything from the customer’s point of view, even when it hurts, and LISTEN deeply for what the customers’ needs are. This short, entertaining business tale chronicles Bob’s ultimate recognition of his customers as CEOs.
Author Chuck Wall is an expert in understanding the needs of customers, having interviewed and surveyed more than 100,000 of them in virtually every business category. Chuck has helped hundreds of companies, from the Fortune 100 to start-ups, acquire hundreds of thousands of new customers.
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Stop, Look, & Listen - Chuck Wall
Author
Prologue
The deck was in flames.
The cargo was sinking.
The crew was about to abandon ship.
The target had been well chosen, and the impact was tumultuous.
And the shell-shocked captain had to somehow muster the strength to carry on.
At least, that was how Bob Cartwright felt that overcast Monday morning. All that he had built was beginning to collapse before his bleary eyes. The spreadsheet in front of him told the tale. But his immediate problem was all the other eyes boring into him from around the conference table. One of the unavoidable facts of leadership is that you are in charge even when you would rather flee the scene unfolding before you.
Bob’s initial reaction to the news he had just heard was a flashback to his training in the navy. He credited much of his business acumen to the lessons he had learned as a naval officer some thirty years earlier, so it was only natural that the horrific news about his brainchild would transport him back to a ship on the water.
Here, in the third week of the second month of the current quarter, it had become clear that Goliath Sounds would miss its numbers once again. Everyone knew there was not enough time in the remaining few weeks to sell more and spend less.
Bob could usually clearly articulate what he was thinking, but that morning only two words tumbled out as his brain was mixing metaphors under the stress he felt:
Train wreck.
Bob Cartwright, founder and CEO of Goliath Sounds, had inadvertently cut through corporate speak to get to the core of the issue. Whether delivered by land, rail, or sea, this morning’s report was a bloody disaster.
Then, after what seemed like an eternity, another voice broke through the smoke clouding Bob’s mind. Bob, I know it’s worse than we thought, but in this economy, it’s the new normal.
Craig Haskell had been at the helm with Bob for the last five years as CFO and was Bob’s closest advisor in the company.
The bitter news that Goliath Sounds was going to miss both its top and bottom line for the sixth consecutive quarter was, as the business press was quite fond of saying, unexpected.
All the pieces had been arranged over the past year to turn the ship around. Bob had upended the entire sales operation, putting some of his longtime managers and salespeople out to pasture. Craig had overseen major cost reductions across the board, taking a sharp axe to the company’s R&D, marketing, IT, and internal operations.
Now this.
Bob cleared his throat and looked at the Goliath management team assembled in his weekly Monday morning AHOD
(All Hands on Deck) meeting. Been down this road too many times,
he said in a tone of defeat unusual for him. No one’s buying the ‘new normal’ line. I’ve already blamed our problems on the competition, the reorg, and the weather. Got a board meeting coming up, and I need some solutions, not excuses. The clock is ticking, people.
With that, Bob stood up, glared at his team, and stalked off, wondering if he had begun his final tour of duty at Goliath.
Part 1
Stop
Chapter 1
Change
Craig was a man with a plan as he knocked on Bob’s open door. Bob pointed at a chair across from his round office conference table.
Craig got right to the point. You said to wait until we saw how the quarter was going to shape up, and now you see. We’ve got to put the plan in place right now, Bob. I wish it was different, but it’s not.
Bob was lost in thought as he stood near his beloved captain’s wheel. It had been rescued from an 1870 naval vessel dubbed the USS Goliath. Bob had purchased it nearly twenty years earlier at an auction, and it served as a reminder of who was in charge at the company—just in case there was any doubt.
There are some good folks here, Bob, but if they knew what to do, they would have figured it out by now. I know you love this ‘get the best folks on the boat’ deal, but it isn’t happening. And the board is going to make someone walk the plank, my friend.
Bob was sick to death of the boat metaphors used so freely by Craig and other Goliath managers, but he had only himself to blame. He made a mental note to stop the boat talk in his next career.
Craig continued. "I’ve already talked to a consulting firm that can