4 strategies to change culture
Culture is elastic, it is the hardest thing to change in any organization, the 'way people do things around here" to quote Michael Porter, is a powerful organiser of behavior. Changing culture by decree from the corner office simply does not work, all it does is...
Lead recycling
"Not now" is a response sales people receive all the time, question is, does it mean not now, or not ever? When sales people hear the words, they have two choices: Ignore the brush off, and keep at it Asses the lead for any long term value, and if it is there, put the...
A huge PR problem.
Problems need a better PR agency, everybody hates them. The bigger the problem, the greater the angst, the higher up the enterprise the problem has currency, the more important it seems to become. However, when you think about it, problems are the catalyst for...
Time is not on your side
Of all the resources we have, time is truly the only one where there is no chance of technology making it replaceable or renewable. We all know that, so why do we continue to waste it so indiscriminately? Seems to me the answer is that we cannot see it messing up the...
Brand babbling
This is a situation where a modest intellect has learned the language, and so can spew out a bunch of marginally related clichés. They understand some of the obvious stuff, can look at the numbers, and have a superficial understanding of customer behavior, and the...
Context is everything
The way most of us see things is dependent on what we expect to see, and how it affects us. If you were a farmer with a just planted crop, rain is a great day, but if you are about to go on a picnic, rain sucks. Similarly, marketing is about setting the context in the...
Where is the money?
To stay in business we all need to make money today, and we also need to understand where the money will be tomorrow, invest in these future cash generating activities, and sometimes make adjustments to the business model. These adjustments are not just another...
Give a mile, take an inch
We are in an evolving age of flattened, silo-less, collaborative enterprises, where accountability for outcomes is increasingly devolved to those teams and individuals on the "front line" who carry the responsibility for implementation. Under these circumstances,...
5 reasons you lost the sale
Sales is a tough job, you win or you lose, with no middle option. Understanding those you lost is the key to improving future performance. Over 30 years of engageing with sales people, managing sales forces, and doing sales training, it seems to me there are just 5...
Reputation is a currency.
My 28 year old son recently tried to get a mobile phone on a plan, and couldn't, he did not have a credit rating. A bit unusual perhaps, but this is a young bloke who has been a self-funded student for a long time, always paid his bills, always met all his...