Flip the Funnel: How to Use Existing Customers to Gain New Ones

SAYING AND DOING ARE NOT ONE AND THE SAME

The reason Starbucks didn’t do any of these things is that they have historically been focused on an acquisition mind-set—regardless of whether they were talking to existing customers (baby, please don’t go) or trying to woo new ones (come to my window). Acquisition mind-sets prompt us to try to talk our way out of our problems instead of just solving them and letting our actions do all the talking.

If Starbucks had flipped the funnel—and they’re beginning to—might they be in a different position then—and now?

What about you? Do you agree with the central premise and hypothesis behind this book? Namely, that we’ve got it all wrong by doggedly pursuing an acquisition-heavy and biased approach to marketing, when in actuality the real lift and magic occurs from a shift to an inside-out approach, a refocus, reprioritization, and realignment of effort, energy, and budget to a customer-centric strategy?

And if so, I want you think about why it’s taken us so long to do anything about this. Why do we continue to pay lip service to a simple, profound truth that has the ability to transform the way we do business and ultimately our very success and longevity?

Probably for the same reason people why morbidly-obese people continue to stuff their faces with jelly-filled doughnuts. Fear. Habit. Denial. Even hubris.

My hope with this book is that it is the strategic equivalent of an intervention, sort of like posting a photograph of your naked ...