Michael J. Silverstein Quotes

Consumers are time constrained, budget restricted and less loved than they would like. Give them a wonderful experience and they will share it. Capture their soul and win big time.

All companies have many opportunities. Strategy is about allocation of resources and priorities.

Completely understand the customer by seeking an intense, complete and empathetic understanding.

Don't ask your customers what they want. This rule is based on the view that they probably don't know. You have to fully understand them, the context for their needs and their major dissatisfactions.

Companies that get in trouble have a failure to see two realities: market trends and competitor attacks.

Consumers cannot think in abstractions. They cannot envision a new concept. They cannot predict their behavior. They can only compare against their current frame of reference. So you need to make the big leap for them. You need to provide them with a reason to buy, a reason to brag to their friends. Expect new-to-the-world ideas to fall on deaf ears. Consumers will, however, change their tune when they can see, touch, and explore.

Looks do count. Deliver visually stunning merchandising. Engage at the point of sale. Help consumers shop with their eyes.

Get out of the office. Roam the frontline. Be observant. Hold your people accountable for creating the new narrative, a new story, in which your customers are the most important "characters". Because, you know, they really are.

Always welcome your customer's scorn. This rule says read the complaint letters. Categorize them. Decide how you are going to wipe them out.

Functional goods sold en masse earn a good return but breakthrough profits come from satisfying emotional needs.

The starting point is to create a qualitative understanding of market drivers. You need to get into the head of the consumer and be able to tell her story. It is both art and science. The purpose of the market map is to define dissatisfactions, hopes, dreams and fears. Winning solutions respond to the distinct and specific needs of a group of consumers.

The truth is that business is simple: create great products, merchandise them at the point of sale, continuously innovate and surprise, reward and achieve a position of loyalty with your front line, and seek new truth from the market. Deliver the goods at a competitive cost. Price to earn a decent but not competitively inviting return. Not much else matters.

Truth is so difficult to hear about. It must be experienced.

Better ramp up your virtual relationships. Companies think omni channel is the correct answer. This is not enough. The information explosion for consumers makes 24/7 and full and complete engagement possible.

A curious mind armed with skill, experience, knowledge, and patterns can give birth to big brand revolution.

Original research starts all inspiration. Get inside the head of the consumer. Understand their needs, hopes and dreams. Deliver to their expectation. Have your team do the work. They will then have the framework for the solution. If they believe and they understand, the results will be their results.

Define a winning proposition that is consumer right and delivers margin accretion.

The top 25 at every company really set the tone. Everyone watches them. They need to be present and focused. No slackers at the top. They need to meet in combination every recruit. They need to meet them on the first day. They need to teach by example. This is the lesson that great companies teach.

Take giant leaps. Too many companies are into incremental innovation. The only thing that moves markets is violent turns. Major differences. Don't get caught in the trap of small steps.

All great companies have spirit and culture. Mean spirited returns mean spirit.

For me, it's often about consumption behavior. I focus my energy on understanding the heavy user. They are "odd" but hold opportunity. I ask: how do they use the product, what motivates them, how can we clone them.

Curiosity is the greatest source of ideas, retail revolutions, and insights.

Business operators that really deeply care about their employees and consumers deliver the right response every day.

A curious mind does not say to consumers "What do you want?" A curious mind understands context, understands behavior, understands spending and spending patterns - the accumulation of a day's purchases, or spending over a week or a year. A curious mind asks the questions that open up the consumer to talk about her latent dissatisfactions, hopes, wishes, and dreams.

A curious mind does not jump to conclusions but tests carefully and thoroughly. A curious mind will draw on all of life's experience to get to the big "uh huh." The curious cut the data by quintile, by segment, and by user.