I was delighted to find the best statement ever written about customer relations management in today’s “Loose Cannon.”
I knew a long time ago that a senior railroad executive said, “We thought we were in the railroad business; we should have realized we were in the transportation business.” Because of this reasoning, the railroads let their golden age slip away, and we have miles of Interstate highways and millions of trailer trucks. Shippers in 2008 are already finding that railroad rates are cheaper than trucking, and their business in increasing.
Even by the end of the Civil War, the railroads knew that their profits came mainly from freight, and that passenger services were never their core business. Thanks to your mention of Theodore Leavitt, I now know where the quote came from. I was reading Trains magazine years ago when the railroad president said it. I once called Kalmbach Publications so that I might use the quote in an article. They couldn’t find it in their own archives, and so I dropped the idea.
We need always to remember Theodore Levitt’s quote in CRM: “Selling is not marketing.”
Fred Morath
Fred Morath Direct Marketing
Natick, MA
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Okay, coffee spit-take performed. I was wondering if anyone noticed this but me
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