How do you measure “customer focused”?
Customer focused has become a cliché, it appears in a wide range of material, usually it seems, written by people who have never interacted with a customer in their lives. So how do you measure customer focused? Here are some basic things you need to know before the...
Telstra takes the “Twit of the year” marketing award.
Yesterday Telstra, Australia's largest, formerly monopoly Telco announced that they would put a $2.20 administration fee on all payments made in person. Even for Telstra, who have over the years dug up creative ways to convince their customers to go elsewhere, this is...
Wake up Woolworths suppliers
How long will it take for the politicians in this country to forge an acceptable compromise amongst all the interests in the carbon debate, and take meaningful action.? Probably forever, and we will end up with the proverbial camel after all the compromise, and that...
Foresight, hindsight, and common sense
On the surface, these appear to be the same coin, different sides, albeit three sides?. Not so in business. Foresight is often little more accurate than the musings of the gypsy at the local fair, whereas hindsight is capable of being 100% accurate. Modelling has...
Weddings as a metaphor.
Planning for your business takes up a lot of time and resource, which is often hard to allocate, particularly in small businesses. It is a bit like the planning that goes into your daughters wedding, many things seem trivial at the time, but when it goes right on the...
Strategy as an organic system
The notion of an organized, planned, tidy strategy development and implementation process, whether it be for a multinational, or a small local business is profoundly flawed by the simple fact that it requires forecasting accurately a number of things, including many...
So, what do sales people do now?
The sales job has changed substantially with the emergence of the web. In the past, many sales people were mobile, human brochures, the keepers of the information. No longer. Most of the mundane information on specifications, performance, competitive advantages, and...
Role of the web in revenge.
A short time ago I purchased a new pair of black "Julius Marlow" shoes from a major retailer. Within a month, the body of the right shoe had separated from the sole, hardly a reasonable result from a purchase worn around the benign environment of a carpeted...
Good news and bad for sales professionals.
Selling is a tough job, and getting tougher, as the number of ways a potential customer can purchase expand with the web, and consumer confidence is fragile, despite the stunning Australian figures a couple of days ago. No longer can sales people fulfill their...
Consumer confidence and recession-proofing
Yesterday, some astonishing figures reflecting consumer confidence were published by the Melbourne Institute and Westpac, with the attendant clichés about the success of the governments actions coming from all parts of the government,applauding the "cash-splash" in...