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Over the long haul, you put profits in the bank by putting the customer first, and there’s a direct analogy with negotiation: We greatly enhance our opportunity for a successful deal by putting the adversary first in our mission and purpose.

…your best customers are the customers you have now… your most successful sales leads come from the selling you’ve already done.

…your circle of friends, colleagues, clients, and customers is the most powerful vehicle you’ve got to get the word out about what you do. What they say about you will ultimately determine the value of your brand.

Pick the wrong person [for CEO], and the penalties include a skidding stock price, vanishing customers, tattered brand reputations, and intense employee criticism.

Customers will never love a company until the employees love it first.

…companies… earn their reputations by being willing to do the right thing for their people and their customers or clients.

When our relationships with customers or employees become abstract concepts, we naturally pursue the most tangible thing we see – the metrics.

When bosses make concerted efforts to understand what it feels like to be a customer, it makes gaps between knowledge and action vivid and helps them identify more effective repairs.

…reams of data aren’t enough… you need to understand what your customers do and how it feels to be them.

…we need to expose ourselves to the winds of change. We need to expose ourselves to our customers, both the ones who are staying with us as well as those that we may lose by sticking to the past.