How to build a personal brand
Personal branding seems to be a popular topic around the pub, even the brickie who lives a few streets away, and is not known for his new age sensitivities, has got a hold of it. It is not new, Julius Caesar had a personal brand well before Bill Shakespeare wrote a...
Renting your sales.
Walking into chain retailers these days you are inevitably confronted by displays of product, usually at a discount. Most people seem to think that it is the retailer doing the promotion as a means to attract added sales, which is true, but the reality is that...
Category management steroids
This post goes back to mid 2012. A conversation yesterday with a colleague brought it to mind, as we were discussing the the opportunities to monetise Intellectual Capital of the sort represented by the 1200 odd StrategyAudit posts. "You know more about category...
Organised serendipity
At first sight, "Organised" and "Serendipity" are at opposite ends of the scale, almost mutually exclusive. Serendipity occurs by chance, when the stars align, the unexpected happens and not by any organised process, or so we are led to believe. Organisation by...
Corporate euthanasia
Holden, SPC, Alcoa, Caltex oil, and all the other industrial enterprises that are currently going out of business or leaving the country are doing so because they failed to keep up with the evolution of technology and management practice. Whilst labour costs, the $A,...
3 core questions of strategy.
Often I find myself engaged in conversations with those running small businesses who believe they have discovered the next big thing, the idea that will change the world, or at least their business. It can be as simple as a tweak to an existing product that enables...
The corruption sideshow
The joint is in a mess. Every time you look at the news, there is another "revelation" of dodgy morality, insider dealings, political duck-shoving and just plain corruption. Greed has become the magnet in our moral compass, and to compete, we are all tempted to cut a...
7 steps to SME digital effectiveness.
A friend of mine has a very successful small business selling high value services to a small group of clients from diverse backgrounds. He does not want to be the next IPO, or employ hundreds, or even tens of people, just a couple to keep the business growing...
The “P-word” simile
Talking with a couple of mates over a beer recently, one of whom has a successful boutique recruitment agency, we found ourselves reflecting on the changes in word usage that had occurred over the last 20 years, and how we had contributed to the changes, most of which...
Customer expectations paradox.
The great paradox in selling is that to sell successfully, we often raise the expectations of those to whom we are selling, but to have satisfied customers, we need to under promise and over-deliver. Complicating that dilemma of the potential mis-match of...