Blogs
School of Hard Knocks
Sam Cece Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
February 2008 Archives
February 15, 2008
Perception is Reality.
My team and I continually look at ways to make our company wildly successful. We listen to our customers and prospects. We look hard at our products. We look at adjacent markets. We look at our competitors. We look at alternative selling channels. All in all, we look at a lot of different things and plan accordingly.
It’s easy to get distracted with spreadsheets and numbers, or worse, look for trending information in data points, where none exists. I like to be consistent in my messaging to my team: customer acquisition, successful customer deployment, customer retention, and finally, complete customer satisfaction.
The more customers you win over, the more customers you will attract. We call it ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’—the more you have, the more you’ll get. Of course, we have to earn every customer's business, but our focus on customer success and satisfaction is fierce. Happy customers buy from you again. Happy customers tell other companies that they’re happy. Happy customers are loyal. Happy customers help you build momentum.
We’ve gained a lot of momentum during the past year by focusing on two things: execution and keeping our current customers happy. We’ve used this simple approach to attract high quality companies to become StrongMail customers. That same approach works in attracting high quality employees.