How to build a sales process for your human salesforce.
These days great sales people, real ones, those that go and talk to customers and potential customers are expensive, and hard to find. Most often in a B2B environment their role is not just closing a sale but developing a relationship that is deeper and longer term...
Social media, Wholesalers of eyeballs.
The business models of all major social media platforms require a profit, and they generate that by being wholesalers of eyeballs. They do not do it for free, any more than your wholesalers of produce at the city markets provides their service for free. Social media...
The 4 dimensions of project planning.
Lessons in project management are hard won, and stumbles can be very expensive. My hard won experience supports the contention of that great management thinker Albert Einstein, noted above. In every project that I have done that delivered sub par outcomes, at least...
How to create a persona that will deliver sales
Three key questions all marketers (should) ask themselves at some early point in marketing program development, and obviously have a great answer, are: Who are we talking to? Why should they listen to us? What do we want them to do now? These are the exact questions...
When template business plans are useless
In Australia, only around 5% of new businesses survive past the 5 year mark, and make money in excess of the cost of capital. Scary, because most of them had a business plan, certainly if they ever borrowed any money from a bank, they had one that probably doubled as...
Is the net killing marketing creativity?
There is just so much stuff around on the net, everything and anything you ever wanted to know, or could think of to ask, is there somewhere. The availability is removing the necessity to think, to capture the essence of a problem, and then develop creative solutions...
How do you reduce customer churn?
Pretty simple answer really; you increase customer retention. It costs way more to find a new costumer than it does to keep a current one, we all know that, but somehow do little about it. Almost every business I interact with fails to get an optimum balance between...
7 things business leaders can learn from this election campaign
Over the weekend I was talking to my 32 year old son about the coming election. I thought I was the quintessential cynical old buggar, while being politically engaged, but I had nothing on my formerly optimistic son. He is not just a cynical young buggar, he is so...
5 things to avoid to do better consumer research
I sat through a qualitative research (focus) group a few weeks ago, recruited over the phone against a specific demographic list. On the odd occasion I receive these calls, my stated occupation is never associated in any way with marketing, as that always disqualifies...
Do we still need books?
In a world of abundance, we are desperately in need of depth. Skating across the surface of the ice is fine for a while, but at some point you need to be able to recognise the weak spots, and figure out how to avoid them before you drop through and drown, just after...