For millennia, good manners were understood as the means by which strangers showed each other respect. Now, too many people demand respect but have lost the ability, or desire, to show it in return. Jonah Goldberg
“What we need, what every organization needs, are people who are committed to the company and its mission. You can’t buy commitment; you can’t mandate it. You can only invite it. And to invite it, you need to engage the passion of every employee.”
“Repetition is important, especially when you’re trying to change the way a company thinks.” – Bill Zollars, President, Yellow Corp.
“I am – just as you are – a unique, never-to-be-repeated event in this universe. Therefore, I have – just as you have – a unique, never-to-be-repeated role in this world.” – George Sheehan 1918-1993, Cardiologist, Runner, and Writer
“I love deadlines. I especially like the whooshing sound they make as they go flying by.” – Scott Adams, Dilbert
“It is not employees’ responsibility to have high service aptitude; it is the company’s to give it to them.” – John DiJulius
“We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about.” – Charles Kingsley
“Four short words sum up what has lifted most successful individuals above the crowd: a little bit more. They did all that was expected of them and a little bit more.” – Lou Vickery, Writer
“Sometimes, I think my most important job as a CEO is to listen for bad news. If you don’t act on it, your people will eventually stop bringing bad news to your attention and that is the beginning of the end.” – Bill Gates
“People do not buy goods and services. They buy relationships, stories and magic.” – Seth Godin
“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” – Wayne Dyer
“Next to doing the right thing, the most important thing is to let people know you are doing the right thing.” – John D. Rockefeller
“Start a Gratitude Journal. It trains the brain to begin focusing on things you like about your life. Watch what happens to your life when you do!” – Christie Marie Sheldon
“Computers are incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid. Humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate, and brilliant. Together they are powerful beyond imagination.” – Albert Einstein
“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” – Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
“Customers will tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear.”
“Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.”
– Leo Buscaglia, Author and Speaker
“Change always comes bearing gifts.” – Price Pritchett
“76.45% of all statistics are meaningless.” – Anonymous
“If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.” – General Eric Shinseki, former Army Chief of Staff
“Your bottom line starts with your front line.” – John Villere
“Four short words sum up what has lifted most successful individuals above the crowd: a little bit more. They did all that was expected of them and a little bit more.”
“You will be the same person in 5 years as you are today except for the books you read and the people you meet.” – Charlie “Tremendous” Jones
“Efficiency is doing things right. Effectiveness is doing the right things.”
“Raising Culture is like raising a teenager….you’ve got to constantly check in with them…”How are you doing? Where are you going? Who are you hanging out with?”
“I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.” – Bill Cosby
“If you find common subjects or interests (common ground) with a prospect, you can establish a business friendship; and people are more likely to buy from a friend than a salesman. ” – Jeffrey Gitomer
“Happy employees create happy customers, and happy customers buy more stuff.”
“There is always a better way of doing things, and either you or your competitor will find it.”
“Character is doing the right thing when nobody is looking.”
“If you do what you’ve always done, you will get what you’ve always got?”
“We’ve all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.” – The Times Book of Quotations
“You have a clean slate every day you wake up. You have a chance every single morning to make that change and be the person you want to be. You just have to decide to do it. Decide today’s the day. Say it; This is going to be my day.” – Brendon Burchard
“A complaint is a present in homely wrapping paper. Tear off the wrapping and there’s a suggestion inside. Unwrap that and there’s a market waiting to be served. Unwrap that and there’s a check with your name on it.” – Dale Dauten
“The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get old ones out.” – Dee Hock, Founder of Visa
“The world is divided into people who think they are right.” – Anonymous.
“Arrogance is believing you are so high up, you don’t need an ear to the ground.” – Harvey Mackay
“Courtesies of a small and trivial character are the ones which strike deepest in the grateful and appreciating heart.” – Henry Clay, American statesman
“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.” – Philo of Alexandria
“Plant a seed for a tree under which you will never sit. Treat someone nicely who can never help you.”
“How important is friendly? To me, if there are 100 qualities of a successful customer service person or salesperson, friendliness is in the top 3, and may be the top one.” – Jeffrey Gitomer
“A great employee is worth 1,000 times more than an average employee. Why? Because of the quality of her ideas.” – Nathan Mhyrvold, former chief technology officer at Microsoft.
“Decide who you want to BE before answering the phone.”
“Advertising is a tax you pay for unremarkable thinking.” – Robert Stephens, founder of Geek Squad
“A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.” – Gen. George Patton
“Genuine listening ability is one the few true forms of competitive advantage.” – Feargal Quinn, Superquinn
“We notice what we choose to notice.” – Seth Godin
“Attracting a new customer costs far more than keeping an old one HAPPY !!”
“The question is NOT how to innovate, but how to INVITE ideas that you may not otherwise encounter.” – Vinton Cerf, MCI WorldCom
“Nothing in fine print is ever good news!” – Anon
“The enemy of the ‘best’ is the ‘good’.” – Steven Covey
“The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.” – William James
“Service isn’t good unless the customer says so.”
“Always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers.” – Steve Covey
“People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.” – Zig Ziglar
“Assumptions are the termites of relationships.” – Henry Winkler (The Fonz)
“Good advice is never cheap, and cheap advice is never good.”
“Most businesses fail to realize that their present customers constitute 100% of all their sales, and 100% of all their profit. Yet by comparison of marketing dollars spent, they’re frightfully less to keep their existing business than they do to gain new business, a fact that has always perplexed me.”
“There’s always a better way to do everything.” – Bob Shaff
“The most powerful management tool is a well-placed, timely ‘thank you’.”