The Best Customer Service Quotes

Bruce Nordstrom - We don’t want to talk about our service. We are not as good as our reputation. It is a very fragile thing. You just have to do it every time, every day.

Jan Carlzon - If you’re not serving the customer, your job is to be serving someone who is.

Jeff Bezos – If someone thinks they are being mistreated by us, they won’t tell 5 people, they’ll tell 5,000.

Peter Drucker – There is only one valid definition of business: to create a customer.

The Best Marketing Research Quotes

Arthur Conan Doyle - It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.

Celia Green – The way to do research is to attach the facts at the point of greatest astonishment.

David Ogilvy – Some people use research like a drunkard uses a lamppost: for support, not illumination.

Gregg Easterbrook - Torture numbers, and they'll confess to anything.

John Sculley – No great marketing decisions have ever been made on qualitative data.

Lord Kelvin - When we cannot express something in numbers, our knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind.

Mark Twain - There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.

Rex Stout - There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up.

Ric Simcock – Facts are available to everyone; it is interpretation and implementation that is key.

Terence Conran - Market research can be not just misleading, but disasterous for people who work on instinct.

Unknown Author - 98% of all statistics are made up.

The Best Advertising Quotes

Bruce Barton - In good times, people want to advertise; in bad times, they have to.

David Ogilvy - I once used the word "obsolete" in a headline, only to discover that 43% of housewives had no idea what it meant. In another headline I used the word "ineffable," only to discover that I didn't know what it meant myself.

David Ogilvy - Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals.

David Ogilvy - Committees can criticize advertisements, but they should never be allowed to create them.

David Ogilvy - Never write an advertisement which you wouldn't want your family to read. You wouldn't tell lies to your own wife. Don't tell them to mine.

David Ogilvy - If you're trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language in which they think.

John Wanamaker - I know half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, but I can never find out which half.

Peter Drucker - The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him or her and sells itself.

Stuart H. Britt - For a business not to advertise is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you are doing but no one else does.

A man wakes up after sleeping under an advertised blanket, on an advertised mattress, pulls off advertised pajamas, bathes in an advertised shower, shaves with an advertised razor, brushes his teeth with advertised toothpaste, washes with advertised soap, puts on advertised clothes, drinks a cup of advertised coffee, drives to work in an advertised car, and then, refuses to advertise, believing it doesn't pay. Later when business is poor, he advertises it for sale. Why is it?

The Best Marketing Books

Although a part of me would like to work for Best Buy or other companies where you can work from home, there is a part of me that enjoys commuting. I can listen to 5-6 hours of audio books each week.

Most of this time is spent listening to various business books, and of course those focused on marketing.

Here are my favorite marketing books that I have come across so far:

Al Ries - Focus
Al Ries - Marketing Warfare
Al Ries - The 11 Immutable Laws of Internet Branding
Al Ries - The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding
Al Ries - The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing
Alexander Hiam and Charles Schewe - The Portable MBA in Marketing
Christopher Locke - Gonzo Marketing
Cox & Stevens - Selling the Wheel
Dale Carnegie - How to Win Friends and Influence People
Dan Kennedy - Customer Appreciation
Dan Kennedy - Magnetic Marketing
Dan Kennedy - Ultimate Marketing and Entrepreneurship
Geoffrey A. Moore – Inside the Tornado
Gerry Spence - How to Argue and Win Every Time
Granville N. TooGood - The Articulate Executive
Henry R. Neave - The Deming Dimension
Jack Trout - The New Positioning
Jack Trout and Lee Silber - Marketing Mindsets
Jack Trout and Steve Rivkin - Differentiate or Die
James F. Moore - The Death of Competition
Janelle Barlow & Claus Moller – A Complaint is a Gift
Jeffrey Fox - How to Become a Marketing Super Star
Jim Collins - Built to Last
Jim Collins - Good to Great
John Kilcullen - How to Build a Brand
Michael Terry & Fred Wiersema - Discipline of Market Leaders
Mikel Harry & Richard Schroeder – Six Sigma
Peter M Senge - The Fifth Discipline
Philip Kotler - Ten Deadly Marketing Sins
Philip Kotler - The Ten Biggest Mistakes Marketers Make
Robert B. Cialdini - The Psychology Influence of Persuasion
Robert Middleton - InfoGuru Marketing
Sergio Zyman - The End of Marketing as we Know it
Seth Godin - All Marketers Are Liars
Seth Godin – Permission Marketing
Seth Godin - Small is the New Big
Seth Godin - Unleashing the Ideavirus
Seth Godin and the Group of 33 - The Big Moo
Steven R Covey - The 4 Disciplines of Execution
Y2 Marketing - Monopolize Your Marketplace

What Isn't Marketing?

Although most people would think only those in marketing professions with the word "marketing" somewhere in their job title do marketing or should be concerned with marketing, I think we all do and must learn how to do marketing well.

Marketing is something we do to promote or position ourselves at our jobs, at home with our family, in our church or community, and virtually everywhere else.

With Marketing being related enough to sales (although I don't believe as related as some like to think), I thought this quote could easily be applied to marketing.

"The fact is, everyone is in sales. Whatever area you work in, you do have clients and you do need to sell." - Jay Abraham

So, what isn't marketing?