Jan 6, 2011 | Customers, Marketing, Sales
Word of mouth advertising has always been the best sort, people put great store in recommendations from those they trust. The extension of this recently has been what I call “word of mouse” advertising, enabled by the networking capabilities of the net.
Taking the idea further, the potential to engage your customers via various forms of social media, to the extent that they become advocates of your product is not only possible, but should be a key marketing objective.
Call centers have progressively taken over the function of a sales force, and technology, and India has progressively taken over the call centers. Perhaps there is an opportunity for high end goods to reverse the trend, use technology to facilitate the transactional end of a relationship with a consumer, but invest in call centers to build the engagement of consumers by personal contact.
Jan 5, 2011 | Change, Innovation
The “green revolution” may be denied by many, failing in the Parliament, and not engaging consumers as their utilities bills increase, but it is happening around us anyway.
The world is greening, despite the best efforts of many to avoid the issues. Because there is a dollar in it, businesses are recognising that the future will be different to the past, and are looking for ways to innovate and find opportunities to build new business models.
This list of the green initiatives of 2010 should make us all think, and perhaps conclude that in the challenges the planet faces in managing our consumption of non recurring resources, there are enormous opportunities for innovation, and change that will enhance the quality of life of those who follow us.
To this list we could easily add the impact of the current floods in Queensland on the world price of coal, and the knock-on impacts of that on utility bills of consumers and business. Given the role QLD plays in world coal supply, there will be some re-evaluation of scenarios in many boardrooms, and I would be surprised if the attraction of alternative energy sources, including nuclear was not considerably enhanced.
Jan 4, 2011 | Change, Customers, Personal Rant, Sales, Small business
Australian manufacturing has been decimated over the last few decades, and whilst there is no single reason for this impact, the determination of the major retailers to use the opening of global sourcing options to reduce their costs and compete on price has been a major contributor.
In my patch, the food industry, a whole layer of mid sized Australian owned food manufacturers have simply gone broke, or sold out to multinationals consolidating manufacturing internationally, as FMCG retailers increasingly sourced overseas. The very few that are left are fighting a rear guard action, and will probably lose.
Therefore, when I hear retailers bleating about the competition from international retailers selling into Australia using the same tools the retailers have used on former Australian suppliers, I think “good one” The latest bleating culminating in an advertising campaign, and lots of appearances by Gerry Harvey amongst others, does nothing but encourage me to believe that the short sighted retail sourcing policies which are just about landed price, with no acceptance of the long term benefits of having a vibrant and innovative manufacturing sector are coming back to bite them on the arse.
Retailers have been dishing it out for years, thumbing their noses at any form of regulation of retail, ignoring the potential and growth of e-tail, it is illuminating to see how they are reacting to some of their medicine coming back to them, although the sales loss is currently only very small, and the consumers they want slugged with GST for online purchases are also their customers, unlikely to thank them for the GST led cost increase.
Get over it, and figure out how to compete on other than shelf price, meanwhile, a few of us are enjoying the sight of retailers squirming.
Jan 3, 2011 | Collaboration, Innovation, Marketing, Social Media
The Microsoft business model has resisted all efforts to introduce open innovation practices into its markets, and many would argue, has stunted its growth and innovative potential as a result.
How rapidly things can change, even when you resist from a position of strength.
Microsoft introduced “Kinect” in the US just before Christmas, with the objective of wresting back some of the gamer/activity market into its X-Box offering which has suffered at the hands of the Wii. At the heart of Kinect is a chip with advanced capabilities, and very quickly hackers have found how to add open source access those capabilities, and are starting to explore applications that would not have occurred to Microsoft, or would have cost too much to pursue.
U-Tube is being used extensively to communicate the astonishing stuff being done, this one being the use of the Kinect chip extracted from a Kinect device bought for $150, to create 3-D images.
The message in all this is simply that open source innovation that engages the crowd outside the boundaries of your ability to harness IP is the exploding as the driver of innovation.
IP is almost unprotectable nowadays, the management task is now a question in two parts,
- “How do we create the conditions for the development of Intellectual Capital around our “patch”? ,
- ” How do we evolve our business model and monetarise it?
Jan 3, 2011 | Management
New year usually signals it is time for one of the most misused management tools to be pulled out of the box again, the dreaded performance appraisal.
Done well, a system to manage the performance of employees, and their managers is one of the most powerful tools to optimise performance, as it encompasses change initiation and management, culture evolution, project implementation, personnel development, strategic and tactical development and implementation, all the stuff we talk about regularly, but often do not get around to doing.
It is easy to put aside hard things, who has never seen some of these practices used, but amongst the thinking that often gets done in this quieter time of the year, it would be wise to review your own systems, perhaps we should rename them “Performance Optimisation” system, rather than performance management.
