7 tips on how not to be boring while presenting.
As small business owners, we are often called on to speak publicly, and like most people, find that intimidating, and for some uncomfortable to the point of nausea. There are many pieces of advice on how to structure a presentation, thousands of them on...
11 practises to build a performance culture.
Managing personnel KPI's, performance reviews by another name, are one of the most intimidating and easy to put off tasks most managers have. Having recently written about behaviours delivering KPI's rather than the other way around, it may be useful to do...
Your ‘Values’ should not be table stakes.
Consultants have delivered a lot of value to many over the years, but in some areas, have screwed the pooch. One is the confusion that presides over the differences in meaning between 'Vision', 'Mission', and 'Values', and more recently, 'Purpose'. The result...
Do we still need book stores and publishers?
I love books, real books, items where you physically engage with them, turn the pages, scribble in the margins, pass them onto friends with a handshake and a 'you will enjoy this'. Behind me (chronologically) are those who have grown up with...
Base KPI’s on behaviour, not outcomes, for best results
It is budget season, so amongst the detritus of everyday management, we have to make time for creating the budgets for the next 12 months, in Australia usually starting July 1. Hopefully, budget preparation is a normal part of the management 'flow' of your...
How to build a super effective customer ‘Persona’
Who is your ideal customer, the one who will not haggle the price, who loves the product you sell, and proselytises for you? Knowing that person in great detail would be marketing and commercial gold. Like all gold, it is hard to find, subject to...
‘Organic’ investment should be the saviour of (some) retail.
I went into a retail store last week with a problem, not really expecting to find anyone or anything that remotely met the immediate need I faced. My web search had revealed many solutions, none of which gave me much confidence for one reason or another,...
The downside of FMCG retail scale.
Woolies and Coles have around 75% of FMCG sales in this country, depending on whose numbers you believe, and which categories are included. They have huge scale, from the farm gate through the supply chain to the consumers wallets. As a result, their cost...
A marketers explanation of Net Present Value (NPV)
'What the Hell is NPV?' the marketer cried Accountants seem to love to baffle with jargon, but that is not, usually, what they set out to do. Rather , they use terms as a shorthand to describe what to them makes absolute sense, but to the rest of us, mere...
Three metrics by which to measure the value of marketing content.
All marketing content I have ever seen is driven by one, or a combination of three things: Vanity They have something to sell They have something to say. There is always some overlap, but when you dig deeper, the motivation is always one of the three, and...