Too many slices and the loaf disappears: Is this the end of Australian FMCG?
What the hell have we been thinking? Some time ago I mused that the slow death of the Australian FMCG manufacturing base was akin to nicking a slice off a cut loaf, one at a time. At any specific time you do not really notice the difference, but looked at...
8 drivers of empathy that deliver sales success.
Selling is not for everyone, it is a hard gig that requires that you are able to understand and deal with rejection. All the most successful sales people recognise that the process is not about them, but is all about the prospect. Even the most likely...
8 Reasons not to change.
We all understand the power of 'Not broken, don't fix' sort of thinking. When things are going OK, even if that is not as well as you would expect, the temptation to leave the status quo in place is compelling. No risk in that is there. I see reasons not...
5 realities we Australians should be thinking about.
This is a personal rant motivated by the continuing sight of politicians pontificating about stuff that does not matter and either ignoring much of the stuff that does, or presenting as facts, suppositions and bullshit that is supposed to make their case...
9 forces you must harness to be a successful C21 marketer
The tools of Marketing have changed, not just a bit, but totally, since the century clock ticked over. The scary thing is that it seems to me that we have seen nothing yet. It is becoming more unpredictable than riding a wild bull every day! While the...
The essential template for profitable management of key, Strategically important customers.
One of the current marketing buzzwords is 'ABM,' or Account Based Marketing. It is heralded as the panacea for all B2B sales challenges, generally with the caveat that you buy their software. What utter Bollocks. Allocating resources against important, and...
Will regulators ever catch up with innovators?
Following on from the rant about the dominance of Gooface a short while ago, comes this 'explanatory' note from Facebook about a test being carried out in several countries that smacks of changes being made to the newsfeed that will remove...
Message to the new CEO.
It is a scary place, no matter how much you have worked and trained for it, suddenly you are the man (or woman) everyone is looking to for the cues they will use that drives behaviour and ultimately results. No person can do everything, but every leader...
The right tool is still not enough
A huge impediment to effective and ultimately successful marketing is our obsession with the tools, especially the new and shiny ones. My father was a very keen golfer who practised and sweated for years to get his handicap down to 20. One of his mates was...
The ‘Rocking Horse Shit’ story.
Years ago in a corporate strategy retreat that was also a reason to have a nasty headache on Thursday morning, we had a session on responding publicly with little or no notice. The disciplines required to be able to speak publicly with clarity and...