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butterfly valve

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globe valve

I’m a biased source (for reasons I’ll explain below), but I wholeheartedly agree with the premise you outline in your post.

As a Rackspace employee, we live and breath the Net Promoter concept (www.theultimatequestion.com) whereby we measure our successes customer by customer by asking them a single, simple question: Would you recommend our services to a friend or colleague?

And while we’re certainly not the only outfit around to make use of this practice, at Rackspace this idea is so ingrained in our collective thoughts that even simple soldiers on the ground such as myself use this question as a guidepost to influence our decision making daily. The concept extends well beyond the boardroom and into the hearts and minds of the customer facing employees who can make the most impact.

My point is this: The realization that creating promoters or evangelists or whatever you care to call them is only the tip of the iceberg. In order to be effective with such a strategy you first empower your employees with the ability to have the types of interactions with customers that create promoters. And then you must incent them to pursue those interactions (much like you describe in your BMW example) at every available opportunity.

I think this very blog comment serves as the perfect example of the power of promoters at work. I have personally gained nothing by taking the time to write this response, yet believe in the concept enough to tout it to an acquaintance and the world. And I’ve been empowered in the sense that I can do so without fear of some marketing suit (no offense to marketing suits) reprimanding me for speaking candidly about our brand.

That’s a different class than the one I was interested in. The Corvette races against other muscle cars like Aston Martin and Panoz. But yes, it is cool that Chevrolet actually races in Le Mans.
.-= Michelle Greer´s last blog ..The Mark That Your Company Culture is Broken =-.

Isn’t that pretty good?

The Caddy CTS is pretty nice for an american car. Not all american cars are bad, just most of them.

And I’m totally with you. I wish I could be proud and pimp out American car makers, but there really isn’t anything that is great about them.

I wish they would just remake 1969 vehicles rather than redesigning them and making them plastic. I’d be first in line to buy a 2010 camaro that was actually steel and based on the real 1969 camaro, and just had state of the art equipment under the hood.
.-= Ray Hernandez´s last blog ..Rent your Photo Booth today! =-.

American car companies are sort of where Korean car companies were about a decade ago. They are starting to make a very good product and it’s going to be under rated for a while.

I’m probably not ever going to order my own Taurus, but that’s because I own my own dealership and have some freedoms many people don’t have.

But if someone were to ask me about getting a great handling and nice 4door sedan with good room for under $40,000, I’d recommend a 2007 BMW 5-series — al’ la 550 or 530. But if they INSISTED on a new car, I’d then say the Ford Taurus SHO is a very very very strong contender and worth a look at.

Save the trunk, it’s not a bad car to look at either. . .

I’m really interested to see how the new American cars are going to fair on the pre-owned side for peoples resale values.

With drastically increased reliability, quality, and chassis designs . . . these car’s might just have us “motorphiles” eating humble pie.

On another note, in relation to resale values. I made this quick post to explain why some cars are worth more than others pre-owned when they shared the same MSRP new: http://blog.motorphilia.com/?p=72