How do you set your prices
Most times people set prices as a function of three things: What their costs are, What margin the budget demands, What the competition is charging. All are the wrong way to go about it. Prices should be absolutely dependent on what customers are willing to pay. This...
The differences between Takt and cycle time, and why they are important.
'Job shops' have particular challenges in production planning and capacity utilisation. No two jobs are exactly the same, so the sequencing of jobs to optimise factory utilisation takes on even more importance. In the middle of an operational improvement...
What do employees really want?
If I asked that question of 50 randomly selected medium sized business owners, the first answer would be something like 'More pay'. That would be the wrong answer. 'More pay' is the default when other things more important to them are missing, and there is no...
How did I do in 2016?
Following is a re-run of the post from January 2016 when I again rubbed my crystal balls and made some predictions for the year. Let me know if you think the scores I gave myself are reasonable. 7 trends driving business in 2016. Like everyone...
Are we coming to the end of the great Australian FMCG Duopoly?
Supermarkets in Australia have had it good for some years, having the protection of a duopoly, which is almost a licence to print money in most circumstances. Woolworths certainly did for quite a while, and the fact that Coles did not is a reflection of poor...
Reflections of a dinosaur on 2017
Never have JM Keynes's words been more relevant: “The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones” He said this in relation to economics, but it seems to me that it is now ubiquitous across everything we do personally and as...
How to make your website really work for you
A friend of mine recently drafted a website for a product he is launching, and asked me to have a look before publishing it. Not a great thing to be doing, as by the time I had finished commenting, he had tuned out. There was just too much bad news. There are millions...
9 strategies for social media marketing success
Social media is the 'shiny new thing' of marketing. Everyone seems to want one, whatever it is, and everyone has a view. There is plenty of advice around on how to do it, I just put the term 'How to manage social media' into Google and got 54.5 million responses in a...
How do you build a truly successful sales foundation
Selling is a tough gig, but it is one that every business has to master or fail. The days of waiting for the next customer to walk through the door and place an order are over. These days you have to be out there hunting for new customers at the same time you are...
Where are your OSZ boundaries?
We are all familiar with the term 'Comfort zone' as in 'that is outside my comfort zone'. When most people speak publicly to a large audience for the first time, it is way outside their comfort zone. That discomfort manifests as fear, they sweat, the knees are...