John L. Flannery Quotes

We do have our finger on the pulse of the marketplace, if for no other reasons than having all these live events and listening to our audience all the time.

You've got to do the research. You've got to understand the market place, know your competitors.

You have to understand who your customer is and her motivations and marry it to what's happening in the outside world.

Put yourself in your customer's place.

If you can't turn yourself into your customer, you probably shouldn't be in the ad writing business at all.

From now on, the technology companies that succeed will be those that have developed skills at listening and a sophisticated understanding of their customers' industries.

We need to put ourselves in the shoes of our customers. That is my new battle cry. Live and breathe Starbucks the way our customers do.

Instead of telling a story about how great your brand is, try telling a story that shows you completely understand and empathize with your customer and their life.

Certainly in business terms, considering how thriving the market is. Understanding what people want is essential. We have a team on the ground whose job it is to keep tabs on what's good, whether it's a tapas bar in Barcelona, or an amazing fish and chip shop in Yorkshire.

You'll learn more in a day talking to customers than a week of brainstorming, a month of watching competitors, or a year of market research.

I love market research because you really have an idea of what your consumers are looking for.

Put your consumers in focus, and listen to what they're actually saying, not what they tell you.

Companies are very, very good - better than consumers themselves - at knowing what consumers are actually craving.

We can believe that we know where the world should go. But unless we're in touch with our customers, our model of the world can diverge from reality. There's no substitute for innovation, of course, but innovation is no substitute for being in touch, either.

It's so important to experience what your customers are experiencing and listen to their suggestions.

If you don't have women working for you, you really don't know what the people who are buying from you really want.

When you know who your customers are, that can give you an edge on the competition.

The successful man is the one who finds out what is the matter with his business before his competitors do.

The most interesting information I can have about a competitor is the cost.

One of the things which make any company successful, in particular the Home Depot, was that we understood and catered to the customer. If it didn't sell, it didn't make a difference what we thought or our research told us. They told us if it was successful by buying it or not.

We need to reengineer companies to focus on figuring out who the customer is, what's the market and what kind of product you should build.

I mistrust anyone... if they're saying, 'Well, that market wants this,' and you're not part of that market.

Don’t ask our customers what they want. Ask yourself what they would want if they knew what you know of what is possible for us to do for them. The burden is on us to understand the consumer’s needs sufficiently to answer that question.

If you think you know the consumer better than anyone, then you're in real trouble. So we take a close watch. You spend time in stores.

For what we want to accomplish in the future, we have to be able to view everything from the eyes of the customer.