Clean Up on Aisle Sales: Segmenting Customers and Attitudes By Desiree Grace A funny thing happened on a customer segmentation journey: trash talk, bad behavior, and customer attitudes were exposed. Say what? Yep, when you start dissecting your customers and how you should be treating them, internal dysfunction often slides into the spotlight too. Here’s what happened: I was working with a client, whom we’ll call Zac, who had no customer segmentation in place. That meant every customer was treated the same way. There was no distinction between great, good, or frankly, terrible customers. They all received the same terms, attention, responsiveness... you name it. As you might guess, this was not sustainable. So, Zac and I collaborated on building a customer rubric —a list of qualities to evaluate and score his customers. This helped segment them into tiers, which in turn dictated how they would be managed. Would they be contacted monthly, semi-monthly, or quarterly? Would t...

Much has been written about developing and practicing effective leadership skills. Books by Jim Collins, Stephen Covey, Dale Carnegie, Jack Welch and Lee Iacocca, to name just a few, have addressed this topic from several perspectives. Thousands of articles have also delved into this subject. What this blog suggests is that there are a few skills/traits that are common in the most effective leaders of any organization. #1 Honesty and Integrity Great leaders create an organizational culture built on these two core values and hold all employees accountable to them. Without honesty and integrity as fundamental cornerstones of an organization, they will rarely succeed long term. And creating such a culture starts at the top of the organization. Everyone watches the leader and takes their cues as to what is acceptable behavior. Effective leaders must also be trustworthy. They are recognized for always telling the truth and for practicing the highest standards of ethical conduct...