How do you get your whole company to think and breathe customer?
Jan Carlzon, former CEO of Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS), wrote
Moments of Truth, in which he described how he got his whole workforce
to focus on the customer.21 He would emphasize at meetings that
SAS handled 5 million customers a year and the average customer met
about five SAS employees in connection with a single journey

Marketing’s original mantra is to “find needs and fill them.” The company finds needs by listening to or interviewing customers and then prepares an appropriate solution to each need. Today, however, there are few needs that companies don’t know about or address. Pietro Guido, an Italian marketing consultant, wrote a book called The No-Need Society to make this point.

Companies formerly won their marketing battles through superior
efficiency or quality. Today they must win through superior creativity.
One does not win through better sameness; one wins through uniqueness.
Winning companies such as IKEA, Harley Davidson, and Southwest
Airlines are unique.

There is great payoff in building a strong corporate brand. Sony can
put its name on any electronic device and customers will prefer it to
the competition. Virgin can enter almost any business and be successful
because its name means brings a fresh approach to that business.

Consultants can play a positive role in helping companies reappraise
their market opportunities, strategies, and tactics. Consultants provide
a client company with an outside-in view to correct the company’s
tendency to take an inside-out view.