The problem with a sales funnel.
Unlike a funnel for petrol into your tank, sugar into your cake, or production ingredient into your ribbon mixer, in a sales funnel there is no bloody gravity! You have to create the gravity! You have to create the customer energy, commitment, interest, whatever it...
How do small businesses collaborate for scale in FMCG?
Small businesses have 10 strategies I have previously summarised, that they can deploy in various ways to build success with the retail gorillas. Collaboration is the 7th, and often the most challenging, as the other parties to the collaboration are not by definition,...
The value of knowledge is relative.
It is interesting to consider the notion of 'knowledge' and how experts are given that label. Often it just means that someone who is seen as an 'expert' may have just a little bit more knowledge that those who are listening. Consider the primary school teacher,...
The two axes of innovation.
The first axis of innovation is the product. French born and educated artist, mathematician, philosopher, free thinker Marcel Duchamp who took American citizenship in 1915 submitted a piece to the prestigious Exhibition of independent artists in New...
The meaning of Easter is hidden in cartoons
Marketing is all about engaging with people, real people, one at a time, and giving them something of value. In the process, often you have to change their minds, give them a sense of what could be, and reflect their lives back to them in ways they had not seen...
How to get to know the things you do not know.
Some pretty smart people say some pretty dumb (with hindsight) things. “Everything that can be invented has been invented.” Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, US Patent Office has been widely credited with this quote in 1899. He may not have said it, but it was...
How to write a position statement
Over the years I have seen hundreds, probably thousands of statements of various kinds intended to position a company, product, opportunity, and most are crap. As a marketing graduate decades ago, in one of my first challenging situations, an interview for a job I...
Evolution and its intersection with digital.
It is fascinating to observe human behavior. Of great interest to me is the intersection with the practices evolving to deal with the digital world, manifested in all sorts of unexpected ways. One is the huge range of digital tools now available using the so...
Hindsight planning: More than a semantic difference.
All sorts of planning activity is aimed at defining the point where we want to be, then assembling the resources and capabilities to get there. That is how planning is done, almost always, because by and large, it seems to work, and it keeps the...
Transaction cost. The least understood cost in business:
This post is the sixth in the series that sets out the means by which small businesses can take advantage of their small scale, and be successful competing against the industry giants for expensive supermarket shelf space. Remove transaction costs. Easy to say, hard...