Kamis, 27 September 2012

Why Good Products Don't Equal Success

Why Good Products Don't Equal Success:

Andrew Strube, inventor of Strube Stink Bug Traps, is an example of why you need a sound business model, not just a well-designed product, to create growth.

Budding entrepreneur Andrew Strube had a stinky problem, so he wrote to us about it:

"What do you do when you're an accidental entrepreneur and your idea is worth so much that several multimillion-dollar corporations jumped in and start designing around your concept before you ever have a chance to follow a business model? This has happened to me recently... I accidentally moved into a house that was inundated with stink bugs in 2009. After not being able to find a solution to stop the problem , I invented one... I am credited for inventing the world's first indoor stink buglight trap (www.stinkbugtrapsonline.com). [After some positive media attention], orders started pouring in from around the country for our stink bug traps. In two months we took in almost $100,000 in sales [but sales have been flat ever since].

If I had to pinpoint the biggest problem it would have to be that I did not have any time at all to plan a business model...It would be nice to find someone to help me build the business...I have tried to pitch to some of the biggest companies but I think maybe our financial status has held us back from any big deals."

Strube's problem is a classic one that stymies many first-time entrepreneurs. They have a good product and solid customer demand from a proven market. Strube says he has a better product, which is patented, and his market is large. But corporate competitors are taking all the market share with what he feels is an inferior product, and this makes him mad.

Instead of getting mad, Strube should get even. All CEOs who seek to build a growing business need to ensure that they have a solid, logical business model, one that an investor or a corporation would want to invest in or partner with. As a lone entrepreneur, you have limited ability to compete, so you need to build the components of a business model that will make your product a success.

Alex Osterwalder identifies nine elements of a successful business model:

1. Customer Segments

For whom are we creating value?

2. Customer Relationships

What type of relationships do we need?

3. Channels

Through which channels do our customers want to be reached?

4. Value Propositions

What value do we deliver to the customer?

5. Key Activities

What activities does our value proposition require?

6. Key Resources

What resources does our value proposition require?

7. Key Partners

Who are our key partners?

8. Revenue Streams

What value are we adding to customers and what are they willing to pay?

9. Cost Structure

What are the necessary costs in our business model?

    Given that Strube has limited resources and a product with the potential to grow quickly, his best bet is probably to find a strategic partner that can build the business model for him. A reputable company in the space that already has manufacturing and distribution partnerships would be ideal. If that's not available, our sense is that he would be best served by partnering with an experienced entrepreneur and/or investor willing to build the business on his behalf.

    Do you have a product or a business model? Send us your thoughts and questions at karlandbill@avondalestrategicpartners.com.



    6 Signs That It's Time to Resign a Client

    6 Signs That It's Time to Resign a Client:

    Not sure if your client relationship is on the skids. Here are six signs that it may be time to part ways.

    Though all client/agency relationships will have highs and lows, it is important to maintain a mutual respect and understanding during the good times and bad. This is typically accomplished through good communication, clearly defined deliverables, and a complete understanding of budgets. However, even when an agency covers all of these bases, a difficult client's actions can have a deleterious effect on the relationship. When you've tried everything and still feel like you're getting nowhere, it might be appropriate to ask yourself, "Is it time to resign the account?"

    Here are six signs that your client relationship might be on the skids. If plagued by one or more of them, it might be time to shake hands and part ways.

    1. Your client is not paying for the work being done.

    Any service organization is entitled to be paid for the services being rendered. If your client doesn't have enough respect to pay you for your work in a reasonable amount of time or you constantly have to chase them to get paid, the relationship might not be worth the trouble.

    2. Your client is not listening to your opinion.

    The agency world's success is based on providing quality input, objective points-of-view and candid counseling. If your client asks you for your opinion but chooses to never listen; or, even worse, stops asking for your advice or listening to input, then it might be time to end the relationship. This is the sound of a death knell in any consulting relationship, as they hire you for your expertise.

    3. Your client is beginning to disrespect your team members.

    In the consulting world, the only real assets you have to sell are your services, creative ideas, and your people. If your client lacks professional courtesy or is in any way disrespectful to your team, then you owe it to them to resign the business. I have long believed that you gain incredible currency from your team when you defend them to a client, particularly when they are doing a good job.

    4. Your client is being dishonest.

    The success of any relationship is based upon honesty and trust. If your client is asking you or your team to do something that is either unethical or immoral, then it is absolutely time to walk away. Communicating something, internally or externally, that you are certain is inaccurate or untrue is a formula for disaster. Never get strong-armed into doing what you know is inappropriate, regardless of how much you are being compensated.

    5. You continual over-servicing of the account.

    All consulting relationships are based upon compensation for services rendered. If you have negotiated an appropriate fee for a clearly specified scope of work, then you owe it to your organization to walk away from the relationship if the client is not willing to pay for overages, yet expects your team to over-service the account. By continual acceptance of over-servicing your client, you create a monster that can never be tamed.

    6. You're not meeting client expectations.

    Though you may have done a good job of delivering on the agreed-upon scope of work, there are times when you just can't make your client happy with the results and they continue to expect things that are either unreasonable or well beyond what the budget warrants. You should always try to manage this from the onset of the relationship, but sometimes expectations can never truly be kept in check. If that's the case, it could be time to just walk away.

    Though I would never encourage an agency to walk away from a client relationship that it worked so hard to secure, sometimes the relationship simply isn't salvageable and the time and energy spent on trying to keep it alive would be best served on other clients or chasing new ones that are a better fit.



    Why Strategy Matters Most

    Why Strategy Matters Most:
    It's the strategic plan, stupid. Have you reconsidered yours lately?
    Leading people is exciting and inspiring. Formulating strategy? Not so much. Cynthia Montgomery, a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, urges CEOs to stop treating the strategic plan as a dead, dusty document and instead make it the beating heart of the enterprise. In her recent book, The Strategist: Be the Leader Your Business Needs, Montgomery imbues strategy with an existential quality: It is why companies exist. Done right, it is why companies succeed. Leigh Buchanan spoke with Montgomery about why CEOs should learn to love this misunderstood part of the job.
    Exposure to a group of entrepreneurs changed the way you had long thought about strategy. Tell me about that.For a long time, I had been teaching strategy, mostly to managers in large corporations, as a matter of frameworks and analysis. Then I started working with entrepreneurs. They talked, sometimes very emotionally, about hard decisions they had faced about whether to stay the course or try to reinvent themselves. And I realized, first of all, that the way we think about strategy has become too mechanistic. And second, I realized how responsible these people felt for their strategies because they felt responsible to their companies and the people working for them. So I thought we should shift our emphasis from the strategy to the leader responsible for that strategy--the strategist.
    What is the strategist's job?The strategist's job is to determine what the company's identity will be, why it will matter, and to whom. Just saying why you are different isn't enough if you're not different in a way that matters to a customer. Think of the distinction Peter Drucker draws between doing things right and doing the right thing. Strategy is about doing the right thing. Here is an exercise. Take a piece of paper and write down the purpose of your business. Then describe what the world is like with you and what it would be like without you, and see if there's a meaningful difference.
    You've asked a lot of entrepreneurs what makes their companies different. What are some bad answers you've received?"We're a one-stop shop." Usually the leader thinks that's more important than the customers do. So I say, OK, if what you have relative to competitors is that you've put these things together, why is that important to the customer, and how much are they willing to pay for that? Another is something like, "We're the largest independent wholesaler in the Midwest." Well, who cares? A lot of people have points of difference. But they're not points of difference that matter.
    What's a good answer?Say someone who grows pineapples can show that the number of days from the field to the store is fewer than his competitors'. Pineapples are a perishable good, so that really matters. The customer will come to him instead of the other guy. Because he's connecting the customer's needs with his offerings.
    What are CEOs spending a lot of time on at the expense of strategy?Leadership has become all about people and culture and these soft things. Yes, it's important to get buy-in, but buy-in to what, exactly? People say, "Which is more important: formulation of strategy or execution?" That's a stupid question. What's the point of having a half-baked strategy executed well?
    But a lot of CEOs pin their successes on their people, not their strategies.I hate it in these annual reports where they just say, "It's our people." That's lazy thinking. Why do those people want to work for you, and why are they more effective working for you than for somebody else? In what way are you adding value to the people? You've got to think about your company, not just your people. You've got to look at your customer and how your company is meeting that customer's needs uniquely well. Because the customer will decide whether you are successful.
    If strategy is created by the entrepreneur rather than by committee, is it more likely to resemble the leader's character?It's amazing how often that is true. You look at people like Henry Ford and Alfred Sloan, and the strategies for their companies match up with their backgrounds. A student once told me he used to know Michael O'Leary, the CEO of Ryanair. He told me how O'Leary was socially. Blunt. In-your-face. Then you look at Ryanair's strategy of having everything bare-bones. They wanted to charge people to use a bathroom. It was about reducing costs, but there was a rudeness to it as well.
    You say strategies often fail because the leader didn't understand the industry. In what way?They look at Starbucks and think they can make a lot of money selling high-end coffee. What they don't understand is the whole system behind Starbucks that enables them to do what they do, and the importance of the brand. They should be looking at different niches. Or they may see an industry that no one has ever got quite right, such as furniture delivery. And they just kind of glibly think, Well, there's something wrong with this industry, and I should be able to fix it. They don't think about all the forces that have made it so difficult. Or they're attracted to an industry because the barriers to entry are low. Everyone says storage is a great opportunity. I can't tell you the number of entrepreneurs I've worked with who have tried to get into storage. And they've failed.
    What other mistakes do leaders make when formulating strategy?A lot of companies get into strategy creep. They just keep adding technologies, adding services, adding customers they'd like to serve. The cost of breadth is often edge--you lose sight of the thing that makes you different.
    If a strategy is composed of interlocking parts--customers, suppliers, pricing, human resources, etc.--can you change pieces of it without changing everything?If you realize that this whole idea of who you are and what you're bringing to market doesn't work anymore, then you have to change everything. Look at Gucci. It had drifted way off course, and when a grandson of the founder tried to take it back to being the pinnacle of the fashion world, he failed miserably. Then they got a new leader, Domenico De Sole, who said from now on, Gucci will stand for good value, fashion forward, and good price. And he changed every single thing in the business model. He changed the stores to be edgy. He changed the customers from conservative, middle-aged women to younger women. He changed the supply chain. He put people on pay per performance--and he had to win over the unions to do it. And it worked, because he had absolute clarity about what Gucci was going to be.
    The alternative is to keep the core but update it?There are lots of changes you can make without changing your core identity. Ikea is always looking for new technologies and new ways to save. But they still do things in a very Ikea way. Students without cars would buy their stuff and had no way of getting it home, so now Ikea lets you rent a van. A higher-end furniture company would never dream of handling deliveries that way. They also have services that can assemble your furniture for you. So as competition comes in and they're expanding the market, they embellish their strategy. But the essence stays the same.
    How much time should leaders spend on strategy?Strategy is like an open folder on your desk. You should always be thinking about it. You probably have a formal process once a year where everybody gets together and talks about the strategic plan and connects it to budgeting and sets targets for people. But that's not where real strategy is made. Entrepreneurs have to think of strategy as something dynamic and fluid: What is a good idea in 2012 may be a bad idea in 2014. They should be constantly reinterpreting the company's experiences as they happen. So it's not just, Does my company make a difference? It's, Does my company make a difference today?


    A Better Way to Work Technology Into Your Business

    A Better Way to Work Technology Into Your Business:
    Technology is moving fast, and so should your company. Here's how to systematically instill a tech-savvy culture.
    The new wave of digital technologies, especially mobile, social media, and the cloud, are evolving at rapid speeds, driven by empowered end-users at the edge of traditional corporations. Powerful smartphones and tablets connected to broad social networks and vast amounts of data are enabling an onslaught of user-driven innovation inside and outside of companies, mostly out of their control. This digital wave requires a deep rethink about how new innovations are sourced, prototyped, validated, and deployed.

    Developing a flexible and broad innovation ecosystem, with active involvement from partners, customers, and employees, is a critical element for success in the digital era. It includes rapid prototyping and user feedback networks or “crowds” to support a “fail fast, cheap, and often” approach to digital innovation. AT&T is a good example of a company that has managed to create innovation hubs, called the Foundry, at the edge of the company around their next generation wireless networks. These hubs, located in Plano, Texas, Ra’anana, Israel, and Palo Alto California, are helping AT&T create ecosystems with entrepreneurs, developers, and customers in applying digital innovation in healthcare, transportation, agriculture and hospitality.

    There is no single silver bullet here nor one size that fits all--catching the digital wave requires a systematic effort, on multiple fronts. The key is to align your company along to company along three critical dimensions: 1) capabilities, 2) culture and leadership, and 3) organizational structure and processes.

    The best practices we have observed in each of these areas are:

    Capabilities:
    • Raise the digital IQ of the workforce by equipping employees with the latest devices and apps
    • Use non-traditional training approaches such as reverse mentoring and user councils made up of digital natives
    • Establish a strong user-centered design capability to engage both internal and external users in designing great experiences
    • Create flexible and extensible IT systems that can support rapid prototyping and deployment
    Culture and leadership:
    • Embed digital into everything you do from R&D to operations, to marketing and HR
    • Encourage the use of social media to drive collaboration, sharing, and crowd-sourced feedback
    • Support leaders who are early adopters of innovative digital solutions and help them seed this throughout your organization
    Organizational design and processes:
    • Create flexible operational layouts that promote experimentation between the digital and physical worlds
    • Implement a systematic monitoring process to spot emerging digital technologies and user behaviors that could impact your business
    • Establish an innovation process that engages customers, employees and partners in co-innovation, including an idea management platform to capture/scale opportunities. This should include:
      • Engaging former and current employees in the company’s innovation ecosystem
      • Building a Network of large and small partners to learn from and co-innovate with on new digital offerings
    Clearly, all of above elements will not happen spontaneously.

    They require vision and leadership from the top since all this entails a broad and deep transformation. It requires a shift of control from your company to your end-users, who help co-create your services, experience and knowledge base. It is not just about the technologies and devices, but about changes in mindset, skills, incentives and above all a re-orientation of the business model.

    This article was co-authored with Scott Snyder, President of Mobiquity and author of The New World of Wireless.

    Rabu, 19 September 2012

    4 Smart Growth Strategies

    4 Smart Growth Strategies:
    Got big competition? Check out these growth strategies that could give you the edge you need.
    If you're running a start-up, it must grow. But where will the growth come from? You can create an entirely new market or you can go after a big market in a new way. In other words, you’ll have to eat your competitor’s lunch.
    You better be sure it’s not easy for your competitor to copy what you’re doing and wipe you out. One way to do that is a growth strategy that slashes the profits of a competitor if it copies your approach.
    I uncovered many such strategies through the 160 plus interviews I did with start-up CEOs for my new book, Hungry Start-up Strategy: Creating New Ventures with Limited Resources and Unlimited Vision, coming out in November.
    Here are four that I found particularly clever.
    1. Take a piece of the revenue you create for customers.
    If your product adds to a customer’s revenues, you can easily charge that customer for a piece of the additional value you create. And if that product is hard for competitors to copy, you can dominate the market.
    An example of this is ASSIA. Started by a former Stanford professor, ASSIA’s service keeps track of how your Internet service provider is doing when it comes to network performance. If it’s taking you too long to, say, download information to your computer, ASSIA’s software will add more bandwidth so you don’t get fed up and switch to a new supplier.
    ASSIA charges a fraction of the $100 million in lost revenue it saves for its Digital Subscriber Line customers and enjoys 90% of the U.S. market since its service works so much better than the competition’s.
    2. Give customers the same performance at a much lower price.
    One of the most popular ways for start-ups to take market share from big competitors is to develop a product that delivers what customers want at a much lower price. Thanks to their lower cost structures and the big company’s reluctance to cut price, this strategy can help a start-up take a bite out of a big company’s lunch.
    John Osher, an entrepreneur had started a company that made a popular battery-operated lollipop. He sold that company and in 1999 invested $1.5 million in Dr. John Spinbrush--later selling it in 2001 for $475 million to Procter & Gamble.
    Dr. John Spinbrush made a $5 electric toothbrush that used technology from his battery-operated lollipop. Companies that made $80 models could not match that price without losing all their profit. P&G was trying to make a product like Osher’s but couldn’t so it bought the company.
    3. Simplify customers’ operations with a product that pays itself back fast.
    If you want to gain market share at your competitor’s expense--look for a customer that’s suffering from too much complexity and simplify it. If that simplicity saves the customer time and money, you can charge a decent price for your product and grow very rapidly at the expense of the competitor who makes that complex product.
    Consider Xsigo, a data networking company that Oracle acquired in August. It was taking market share from the likes of Cisco Systems and was growing at over 100% a year because it helped customers save money by simplifying the way they store and retrieve data.
    It had an 80% win rate, according to its CEO Lloyd Carney, because it cut the waste in part of a company’s computing infrastructure by 50% to 60%. For example, Salesforce.com paid under $200,000 for its first Xsigo product and saved over $1 million in capital expenditures in the bargain.
    4. Help your customers get their job done faster.
    Workers these days may be lucky to have jobs, but they’re usually doing the work of the people who got canned. Naturally, management is putting more pressure on those who are left to get their jobs done faster.
    If your start-up helps them do that, demand for your product will be through the roof.
    One example is Appcelerator. According to CEO Jeff Haynie, its platform “allows developers and enterprises to get their mobile apps to market 70% faster.” The product is popular--Haynie notes that Appcelerator’s 300,000 developers have created 40,000 mobile apps deployed on 80 million devices. Appcelerator has almost 200 employees and has raised “well over $50 million in financing.”
    And Appcelerator’s customer base is huge. It has 1,200 customers include NBCUniversal, Cisco, Zipcar, and Safeguard Scientifics.
    One thing these four strategies all have in common is that they all make the lives of customers better in measurable ways. If that means less revenue for competitors, these start-up winners are not complaining.


    One Question to Make Your Company Smarter

    One Question to Make Your Company Smarter:
    If you want your team to learn from experience, I encourage you to add this simple question to your conversations.
    My team has a not-so-inside joke about me. Here's why they tease me: Whenever we get unexpected results, or friction with a client or vendor or in a new working environment, at the end of the day I ask them:
    "What are we learning?"
    I'm not the first person to notice that smart people still repeat mistakes ... often. Even smart people often fail to learn from experience.
    If you want your organization to learn from all of its experiences, then I encourage you to adopt this simple question as a part of your regular dialogue.
    You could ask it at the conclusion of every meeting, but I have found that people get numb to the exercise, so it produces a diminishing quality of responses. You could ask it by email, but I have found that I get short answers or no response at all.
    How to Get the Best Results
    So if you are going to adopt this question, here are a few guidelines:
    When to ask: I like to ask just after the part of the conversation when people have let off steam. I don't have much stomach for general complaining, but some frustration is understandable when people are focusing on their own excitement, surprise or disappointment. My goal is to transfer the energy of the moment into behavioral reinforcement or change for the future.
    How to ask: Usually, I start with a quick summary of the circumstances--what we expected, where we are now, and how we got to this point. Of course, because I am in the conversation, I have to try to check my own emotional energy at the door, which is not easy. But one of my old mentors told me, "Facts are our friends, even when they are unfriendly." I try to stick to the facts.
    Who to ask: Each time, try to ask someone different to weigh in first. That's a good way to make certain that, over time, everyone gets heard. Many small teams have some very vocal members, while others are quiet. However, some of the best insights may come from the quiet members--and to get their ideas means asking them first.
    Start positive: The group will want to hear what you have to say. Go last and start first with the productive and positive lessons first. The risk inherent in this question is that it can become another way to point out faults and flaws. That will not produce a culture that embraces learning.
    Skip the blame: Similarly, keep in mind that "What are we learning?" is a very different question than "Whose fault is it?" You are looking for insights that will change behaviors and increase the potential for success in the future. To do that, focus on the facts and the process, not the people.
    Even though my team teases me, I catch my employees using the same technique with vendors, clients, and each other. Learning organizations win.


    Is Your Company Suffering From Short-Term-itis?

    Is Your Company Suffering From Short-Term-itis?:
    Managing partner of Satori Capital Sunny Vanderbeck says an overemphasis on short-term results can cause relationships with key stakeholders to erode in a business.
    What’s the secret to building a profitable, growing, and sustainable business? According to Sunny Vanderbeck, managing partner of Satori Capital, a Dallas-based private investment firm he co-founded with Randy Eisenman, a business must maintain a commitment to the success of all stakeholders. Business owners must not focus too much on maximizing only shareholder value, he says, but to also consider other stakeholders, including employees, customers, suppliers, the community, etc. He honed this belief while running Data Return, a leading provider of managed services and utility computing that he co-founded in 1997. He became one of the youngest CEOs to lead a NASDAQ company when he took Data Return public, achieving a market cap in excess of $3 billion. After a very lucrative exit in 2007, Vanderbeck went on to become an advisor and board member to numerous mid-market private businesses and to found Satori Capital. Vanderbeck spoke with Inc. reporter Abigail Tracy about why short-term results are not in the best interest of any company that plans to last and how to choose investors that don’t suffer from "short-term-itis."

    What is key to creating a sustainable company?
    A sustainable company focuses on creating value for each stakeholder. These businesses consistently attempt to determine what stakeholders want and need and then build and execute their plans based on those wants and needs. Ultimately, profit and shareholder returns flow from this value creation.

    You have identified "short-term-itis" as a common problem today amongst companies. Can you explain this concept and what it means for businesses?
    Short-term-itis means an overemphasis on short-term results often at the expense of a company's longer-term best interest. Businesses that are overly focused on optimizing near-term results frequently make decisions that adversely impact the company's relationships with key stakeholders. These adversely affected relationships ultimately cause value to erode in a business. Behind all these companies are real people, and these people generally remember how they were treated. And that can flow back to the company in good ways or in bad. Said another way, karma is real in business.

    Do you think short-term-itis is a result of business owners giving to much importance to finding funding and making money?
    Short-term-itis is caused and influenced by a variety of factors. The largest of these factors are public company quarterly earnings releases and the structures and expectations around investment funds. Wall Street and most public market investors are hyper focused on companies’ quarterly results, while most private investment funds expect to be in and out of their investments and generate a positive return in about three to five years. The focus and expectations of these investors, whether they be in public or private companies, often create pressure on businesses to take actions that in the short term will increase earnings but do not build lasting value.

    What do you think is important for business owners to keep in mind when they are seeking funding?
    First and foremost, business owners need to realize they are choosing a partner so they need to choose wisely. Further, they need to understand why they are seeking funding; how they will use the funds; and what else, if anything, besides money do they want from a capital provider.

    What do you see as the greatest mistake an owner can make during the funding process?
    A common mistake, and perhaps the most damaging one, is to choose a financial partner based solely on valuation or price. While valuation/price is important, so too is the value that a financial partner can add to a business as well as the alignment in values, philosophies, and time horizon between the business owner and a new financial partner. Your new financial partner is going to be your partner in good times and in bad. Ask yourself how you really feel about spending years of your life around this partner through the ups and downs of a business.

    How can business owners maintain balance during this process—still maintain their company's "purpose" without letting financial stakeholders achieve primacy?
    Business owners need to stay mindful of several key concepts. First, the system, which is the company in this case, will only be in balance when the needs of all stakeholders are met. It is important not to let any of the stakeholders "crowd out" the others. Further, businesses that operate with a stakeholder-centric approach and a long-term time horizon create greater financial returns. And remember, the CEO is the financial stakeholder if no outside capital has been raised.

    How can business owners determine how much funding they really need? Is it important for them to be able to identify this number?
    These are two very different questions, and the answers depend on whether a business owner is seeking venture capital or a private equity investment. Private equity is about balancing personal cash needs with new partners that can help grow the business. On the other hand, venture capital is about building a specific plan that lays out in detail how the capital will be used. I suggest that a business owner start with the end in mind, considering what he/she is trying to achieve, and then work backwards from there. In the case of venture capital, the adage about "it takes twice as long and costs twice as much" has more truth in it than most entrepreneurs want to believe.
    Want to learn more growth secrets from Sunny Vanderbeck? Join him and other seasoned entrepreneurs on October 3 in Phoenix for our Inc. 500|5000 conference. Visit conference.inc.com for more details.


    Minggu, 16 September 2012

    Four Steps To Deal With Dishonest People

    Four Steps To Deal With Dishonest People: You’ve been wronged. Now and then we all have to deal with someone being dishonest. I just had to. And while it’s very frustrating, a friend of mine reminded me that “it is hard to protect yourself from a lie.” That is, no matter how you cut it, no amount of due diligence will protect you from the ill effects of someone not playing straight with you. Ethics and integrity are oft-written-about topics when it comes to leadership, but that doesn’t mean that all leaders (or anyone for that matter) make the translation to their own actions. We all have experiences where leaders did not do what they said they would do, said one thing up the chain of command and another thing down the chain of command, or even flat-out did something dishonest.

    Implementing The Most Effective Methods Of Reaching Your Consumer Is Everything

    Implementing The Most Effective Methods Of Reaching Your Consumer Is Everything: I’ve never heard any retailer state that it has “all the business it can handle.” The quest for building a solid base of loyal consumers and the expansion of reaching new consumers are every retailer's goals. Offering an assortment of products and services desired by the target market is not enough to bring consumers to the retailer’s store front. Ongoing promotion of the store’s brand, image, products and services are required.

    Carrefour's CEO Challenge: Finding the Balance Between Realistic and Optimistic

    Carrefour's CEO Challenge: Finding the Balance Between Realistic and Optimistic: Georges Plassat, the new chief executive of Carrefour SA, is under tremendous pressure to explain how he aims to turn around the troubled French retailer. The trick will be to go far enough—but not too far.

    5 Powerful Things Happen When A Leader Is Transparent

    5 Powerful Things Happen When A Leader Is Transparent: Trust and transparency have become popular workplace demands as employees seek to be aware of what is real and true. People have grown tired of surprises and want to exist in a work environment that allows one to have greater clarity of thought – by eliminating the unknowns that continue to creep into our minds with each decision we make or relationship we foster. If you survey the workplace, besides the need for job security and career advancement opportunities – employees want to be a part of a workplace culture that puts a premium on delivering the truth. They desire their leaders to be proactive in sharing where the company is headed and forthright about its future. In other words, they just want transparency so they can plan and protect themselves. Five powerful things that happen when a leader can be transparent.

    10 Leadership Lessons From Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn:

    10 Leadership Lessons From Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn:: I had the pleasure of attending the first video pilot interview of LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner by Adam Bryant, New York Times Senior Editor for Features.

    Why Don't We Measure The Productivity Of Leaders? The 3 Critical Questions Every Company Should Ask

    Why Don't We Measure The Productivity Of Leaders? The 3 Critical Questions Every Company Should Ask: The Department of Labor regularly reports on the productivity of the general workforce.  In the past few years annualized gains have been as high as 4% and as low as .5% per year.  But nothing is ever said about the productivity of leaders. Yet we all know that leaders have high leverage and can set the example for the entire workforce.

    3 Ways to Become a Strategic Risk Taker

    3 Ways to Become a Strategic Risk Taker: Some people are fundamentally risk-averse, by nature. Others seek risk out to the point of recklessness. Culturally, we tend to think of this first group as the wise ones, especially by contrast to the wild ones. They are the ones who stick with one job, one spouse and one set of super-slowly maturing blue chip stock market investments for a lifetime.

    Entrepreneurs: You Can Find Success By Simplifying

    Entrepreneurs: You Can Find Success By Simplifying: Thousands of entrepreneurs build giant companies that employ hundreds of people and have positive impacts on the communities they choose to call home.  Menlo Park, CA. has roughly 34,000 residents, think of the impact that Facebook and it's nearly 7,000 employees are making on that community.

    Minggu, 09 September 2012

    Positioning Strategy

    All marketing strategy is built on STP : Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning. A company discovers different needs and groups in the marketplace, targets those needs and groups that it can satisfy in a superior way, and then positions its offering so that the target market recognizes the company's distinctive offering and image. If a company does a poor job of positioning, the market will be confused as to what to expect. If a company does an excellent job of positioning, then it can work out the rest of its marketing planning and differentiation from its positioning strategy.

    Positioning is the act of designing the company's offering and image to occupy a distinctive place in the mind of the target market. The end result of positioning is the successful creation of a customer-focused value proposition, a cogent reason why the target market should buy the product. Hertz is thought of as the world's largest auto-rental agency, Coca-Cola as the world's largest soft-drink company, and Porsche as one of the world's best sports cars. These brands own these positions, and it would be hard for a competitor to claim them.

    As companies increase the number of claimed benefits for their brand, they risk dis¬belief and a loss of clear positioning. In general, a company must avoid four major errors:
    1. Underpositioning: Some companies discover that buyers have only a vague idea of the brand. The brand is seen as just another entry in a crowded marketplace. When Pepsi introduced its clear Crystal Pepsi in 1993, customers were distinctly unimpressed. They didn't see "clarity" as an important benefit in a soft drink.

    2. Overpositioning: Buyers may have too narrow an image of the brand. Thus a consumer might think that diamond rings at Tiffany start at $5,000 when in fact Tiffany now offers affordable diamond rings starting at $1,000.

    3. Confused positioning: Buyers might have a confused image of the brand resulting from the company's making too many claims or changing the brand's positioning too frequently. This was the case with Stephen Jobs's sleek and powerful NeXT desktop computer, which was positioned first for students, then for engineers, and then for businesspeople, all unsuccessfully.

    4. Doubtful positioning: Buyers may find it hard to believe the brand claims in view of the product's features, price, or manufacturer. When GM's Cadillac division introduced the Cimarron, it positioned the car as a luxury competitor with BMW, Mercedes, and Audi. Although the car featured leather seats, a luggage rack, lots of chrome, and a Cadillac logo stamped on the chassis, customers saw it as a dolled-up version of Chevy's Cavalier and Oldsmobile's Firenza. The car was positioned as "more for more": customers saw it as "less for more."

    Source of Reference:
    Philip Kotler and Kevin Lane Keller, Marketing Management, Prentice Hall.

    Source: Positioning Strategy

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    Minggu, 02 September 2012

    Secrets to a Successful Social Media Strategy

    If you're like most busy business owners, you're probably thinking to yourself, "I barely have enough time to run my company, now I have to worry about social media?"

    Social media can seem overwhelming and daunting, but if you break it down into tiny little pieces, it's actually quite doable. And with new, affordable management tools on the market every day, the process can be more than worth it to your bottom line.

    I just hosted 15 customers at our VerticalResponse offices and talked to them about this very subject. One woman, who sells her goods on eBay, posts to Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter every hour. But another woman doesn't because she doesn't really know where to begin or what to say.
    This is what we say to people: You've got a ton of great content at your fingertips that you might not think is interesting, but I'll tell you, your followers do! Your followers follow or like you for a reason. Keeping in front of them could get them talking about you to their friends, and guess what? If they're a customer, their friends are probably a lot like them, which means potential customers for you.

    Share Great Content

    1. Pictures and Videos

    If you sell goods, you've got pictures. Got employees? Take pictures of them! Going to an event for business? Snap away! Research has shown that pictures or videos posted to social networks get the highest degree of engagement. The more people like, comment or retweet your pictures, the more new eyeballs your business might get exposed to.

    2. Press

    If you've got a press release about a new product, service or an award you've won, post it! Same goes for any news articles or mentions in the media.

    3. Sales

    I've seen some really great companies give interesting discounts to social media followers only. So why not publish a discount, free shipping or a free gift with purchase every Thursday? That'll definitely keep things interesting.

    4. Cool Articles

    You're consuming articles and interesting things on your own social networks or publications you like. It's overly acceptable to post that information. If you think it's worth reading, chances are your followers will, too.

    Save Time by Pre-Scheduling Posts

    If you can't remember to post something interesting to your social networks when it happens, no problem! I suggest you reserve about 20 minutes per month to pre-schedule tweets, Facebook and LinkedIn posts.

    This way you'll know that if you forget that moment or are having a super busy day, you're still sharing content with your followers. (You still want to publish spur-of-the-moment posts, of course.)

    There are several low-cost social media management tools out there, like Sprout Social, HootSuite or my company's VerticalResponse Social tool. It's sure saved me a ton of time and still lets my company remain relevant in the social sphere.

    Social media can boost your business if you let it, and it doesn't take a lot to get out there and begin. Use what you've got and post away!




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