Topic: Competing in the Interactive Age

Martha Rogers

Named in 2015 by Satmetrix as #1 on their list of “Top 25 Customer Experience Leaders,” Dr. Martha Rogers is an acclaimed author, business strategist and Founder Emerita of Peppers & Rogers Group, now part of Teletech. She has been recognized for more than 20 years as one of the leading authorities on customer-focused relationship management strategies and trust, and founded Trustability Metrix, designed to help companies understand how they are trusted by customers, employees, and business partners.

Business 2.0 magazine named Martha Rogers, Ph.D. one of the 19 “most important business gurus” of the past century. The World Technology Network named her as "an innovator most likely to create visionary ripple effects." Accenture's Institute for Strategic Change ranked her among the Global "Top 100 Business Intellectuals." Martha's experience, expertise, and ability to think "out of the box" makes her equally popular with media interviewers, speaking event planners, and Fortune 1000 executives seeking to learn how to compete in the Information Age, how to get a payoff from their CRM software and technology, how to build the value of their customer base, and how to cascade the changes needed in an organization to realize ROC – the return on the investment companies make in their customers.

In 2013, Martha Rogers and business partner Don Peppers were inducted into the Direct Marketing Association Hall of Fame.

Martha's counsel and insight are regularly sought by Fortune 500 and Blue Chip executives as well as conference organizers. Her thought leadership and presentations routinely focus on the business issues that today’s global enterprises are grappling with, while trying to maintain a competitive edge in their marketplace: balancing long-and short-term goals by managing customer values, increasing organizational trustability in the Age of Transparency, the effect of new technology and social media to every business and organization and their strategy, building stronger customer relationships and customer experiences, what engagement, innovation and trust mean for the future viability of every business, how to cascade the changes needed in an organization to build the value that customers create, how to use increases in customer revenue and customer equity as the basis for compensation and reward, why and how to overhaul your business model before your competition (or channel partner) does it for you.

With Don Peppers, Rogers has produced a legacy of international best-sellers that have collectively sold well over a million copies in 18 languages. Peppers' and Rogers' newest book, their ninth, is Extreme Trust: Honesty as a Competitive Advantage (Penguin 2012). It suggests that social networks and rapidly increasing transparency have combined to raise customer expectations regarding the trustworthiness of the companies and organizations they deal with. Rules to Break & Laws to Follow, published in 2008, was named as the inaugural title to Microsoft's "Executive Leadership Series." Among the other best-sellers authored by Peppers and Rogers, their first—The One to One Future (1993)—was named by Tom Peters as "one of the two or three most important business books ever written," while Business Week called it the "bible of the customer strategy revolution." Enterprise One to One (1997), received a 5-star rating from the Wall Street Journal.

One to One B2B made the New York Times Business best-seller list within a month of its publication in 2001. Their 2005 book Return on Customer was named one of the 15 "most important reads" of 2005 by Fast Company, and cited again in 2007 on its list of the 25 "Best Books" in business. In 2011 the authors released a second, updated edition of their CRM textbook for university use in graduate level courses, Managing Customer Relationships. An adjunct professor at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, where she co-directed the Teradata Center for Customer Strategy, Dr. Rogers has been widely published in academic and trade journals, including Harvard Business Review, Journal of Advertising Research, Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, and Journal of Applied Psychology.

She has been named International Sales and Marketing Executives' Educator of the Year. Dr. Rogers earned her Ph.D. at the University of Tennessee as a Bickel fellow. At Peppers & Rogers Group, Dr. Rogers led several large subscription-based research studies focusing on particular aspects of CRM, including direct-to-consumer selling. She has blogged for Huffington Post, and elsewhere. She is married to Dick Cavett and lives in New York City.

Don Peppers

Recognized for more than 20 years as one of the world's leading authorities on customer-focused business strategies, Don Peppers is an acclaimed author and a founding partner of Peppers & Rogers Group, the world's premier customer-centric management consulting firm.

The Times of London has listed Don among their "Top 50 Business Brains," Accenture has included him in its global list of the "Top 100 Business Intellectuals," and the U.K.'s Chartered Institute for Marketing put him on its list of the "50 most influential thinkers in marketing and business today." In 2013, Don Peppers, along with partner, Martha Rogers, were inducted into the Direct Marketing Association Hall of Fame. And, in 2015, Satmetrix listed Don Peppers and Martha Rogers #1 on their list of Top 25 Customer Experience Leaders.

Don has a popular voice in the worldwide media, and as a top 100 "IN-fluencer" for Linkedin.com he has more than 230,000 followers for his regular blog posts. His thought leadership, keynote presentations, and executive workshops routinely focus on the business issues that today's global enterprises are grappling with, while trying to maintain a competitive edge in their marketplace. These include:

-Building stronger customer relationships, better customer experiences, and trust;
-Stimulating innovative thinking and benefiting from new ideas within a firm;
-Engaging employees in order to create a stronger, more competitive corporate culture;
-Dealing with social media, customer advocacy, and increasing levels of business transparency;
-Balancing long-and short-term financial goals by focusing on customer value; and
-Using scientific reasoning to make better business decisions, based on data.

With co-author Martha Rogers, Ph.D., Peppers has produced a legacy of international best-sellers collectively selling well over a million copies in 18 languages. Peppers' and Rogers' newest book, their ninth together, is Extreme Trust: Honesty as a Competitive Advantage (Penguin 2012). It argues that social networks and rapidly increasing transparency have combined to raise customer expectations regarding the trustworthiness of the companies and organizations they deal with.

Peppers and Rogers are often credited with having launched the CRM revolution with their very first book, The One to One Future: Building Relationships One Customer at a Time (1993). Inc. Magazine’s managing editor called this book "one of the two or three most important business books ever  written," while Business Week called it the "bible of the new marketing." And in 2011, the authors released a second, updated edition of their widely used CRM textbook for university use in graduate level courses, Managing Customer Relationships: A Strategic Perspective.

Prior to founding Peppers & Rogers Group, Don served as the CEO of a top-20 direct marketing agency (Perkins/Butler Direct Marketing, a division of Chiat/Day) and his book Life’s a Pitch: Then You Buy (1995) chronicles his exploits as a celebrated new-business rainmaker in the advertising industry. Before Madison Avenue, he worked as an economist in the oil industry, and as the director of accounting for a regional airline.

He holds a Bachelor's Degree in astronautical engineering from the U.S. Air Force Academy, and a Master's Degree in public affairs from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. He is a competitive runner and a very happily married father of five.